"It was in the year of 1933." "Grace and her father were heading southward with their army of gangsters." "After leaving Dogville they'd returned to Denver only to find that the mice had been truly playing while the cat was away and new forces had taken over their former possessions." "The result was an unappealing retreat that had brought them through the state of Alabama in search of new hunting grounds." "No, they will not admit it, but it's a fact." "Deep down, there isn't a woman alive who doesn't nurture these fantasies." "Whether they involve harems, or being hunted through the jungle by torch-bearing natives." "However much they go on about civilization and democracy sexy it ain't." "Grace and her father had resumed their legendary discord even as they pulled out of Dogville." "Although Grace had been applying the technique of letting things go in one ear and out the other for a long time she was somewhat weary of her unbearably overweening daddy who believed any nagging woman could be pacified with the good old bouquet of carnations." "You wouldn't have had the guts to talk like that if mother had been alive." "No, you're right my girl, I would not." "We're going, boss..." "Miss..." "Lady, can I talk to you?" "Can I talk to you?" " Yes?" " They gonna whip him!" "I knew they would." "He ain't stole nothin'." "They put that Rhenish wine from Mam's bedside table in his cabin just to give them somethin' to whip him for." "One bottle, and it's a whippin'." "That's "Mam's Law"!" "What are you talking about?" "Who?" "Who are they going to whip?" " Timothy." " Why?" "That's how they do us slaves." " Slaves?" " Yes, Ma'am." "Surely you've hear of slaves." "That's what we is at Manderlay..." "This godforsaken place." "That's how I got out." "When a whippin's in the offin' they take out a section of the fence." "Listen, Grace, it's a local matter." "It's not for us to poke our noses in." " Just because it's a local matter?" " It's not our responsibility." "You think the Negroes wanted to leave Africa?" "Wasn't it us who brought them here?" "We've done them a great wrong." "It's our abuse that's made them what they are." "Untie him!" "Stop!" "'Fraid not, lady." "Slavery was abolished seventy years ago." "If you won't obey that law of your own accord, we'll compel you to do so." "Mam!" "Help me get her inside." "Water for Mam!" "Act quickly, Rose." "Spare me your hypocrisy, you dumb old slave." "Get out." "Leave us alone." "If you're looking for sympathy, don't expect any from me." "Listen..." "I'm very old and, unfortunately, dying." "I should like to ask you for a favor." "If it allows you to go on exploiting these people like slaves" "I'll have to say no, no matter how "dying" you are." "Slavery is over now, I can see that." "It had to come one day." "All right..." "I'll probably refuse you, but you might as well ask." "There's a book under my mattress." "I should like you to retrieve it and burn it for me." " It would be best for everyone." " I'm sure you think so." "But it's my view that anything is best served by being brought out into the open." "I beg you." "One woman to another." "Woman to woman makes no difference to me." "The sins of the past are sins I cannot and do not wish to help you erase." "Now I must leave you." "My father's men have unlocked the gates so now everybody can come and go as they please." "Let everyone here know that from now on they can enjoy the same freedoms as any other citizen of this country." "The Constitution can be found at any courthouse." "Here's a tip for when you sue the family..." "There's a weighty written evidence concealed in this very room." "She's dead!" "The old devil...!" "Oh, I'm sorry." "I didn't mean it, Missy." "No, no." "If any of us deserves an apology, it's not me." "I'm afraid..." "There's nothing to be afraid of." "We've taken all the family's weapons." "No." "I'm afraid of what will happen now." "I fear we ain't ready for a completely new way of life." "At Manderlay, we slaves took supper at seven." "When do people take supper when they're free?" "We don't know these things." "Free men eat when they're hungry." "Free women, as well." "Considering the times and the situation," "Grace's words on meal times for free citizens may have seemed a trifle over-spirited." "We shouldn't believe there lay any contempt in these words for the wretched and starving people of America." "Grace rejoined the gangsters, who had concluded their disarmament of the plantation's powers-that-had-been though their findings were meager the shotgun and an old toy pistol." "All right, we can go." "No, let's just wait a moment." "What are you waiting for?" "For them to come and thank you?" "Or for them to burn the place down by the glow of the torchlight?" "You are a bigot, Daddy!" "You always have been." "We owe these people!" "We brought them here." "We abused them." " We made them what they are!" " I admit I don't do deals with the Japs." "You can't trust them when there's big money at stake." "But a bigot...?" " Why don't they come out?" " That's exactly what you said last time." " Last time?" " Remember when you were six?" "You thought it was so sad that your beloved Tweety was shut up in a cage." "And nobody could persuade you not to let him out." "Tweety was a proud little bird." "Well, his dignified exit didn't do Tweety a hell of a lot of good," "We found him the next morning underneath your window." " Frozen to death." " I know." "He was an indoor bird." "He didn't have a chance." "What do you think those Negroes in there are?" "How many generations do you think made their homes behind that fence?" "I bet most of them have taken up employment in their former jobs." "Contracts and all." "Now they'll get a few dollars, but they'll soon drink that up." "Maybe they'll borrow a bit more from their employers who have no doubt opened a store full of colorful wares, just for them." "They won't be able to pay back the money, and they'll be trapped again." "What you did was all very noble, my girl but, when push comes to shove, you've just made things far worse." "Just as you did with Tweety." "So, all we can do is hope there's no frost." "What you said about contracts and loans..." " That's fraud." " Fraud?" "See, I've read that free slaves are given a mule and a plot of land to establish themselves." "Yep, that's true but it turned out that the fellow who owned the mule and the land kept it all for himself." "So nothing really ever happened." "It may take them a while to gather evidence against the plantation for when the family goes on trial." "Trial?" "Tater-pie," "There are times when you seem even less with it than your dear mother." "No, I seem to have underestimated 'em." "We've at least one man with a genuine thirst for freedom and he's gettin' out, and he's in a hurry." "He's high-tailin' it, all right." "Yeah, it's Gramps." " pardon me..." " Not a lot of dignity there." "He's scared out of his wits." "Would it be possible to have a word with the young lady?" " Yes, yes..." " Don't mean to inconvenience you." " That's exactly what you're doing." " No, you're not." "This is a grave day for everyone." "I just thought we must have seemed a bit ungrateful." "We should like to thank you properly for what you've done." "It'll only take a moment." " Yes, of course." " Ten minutes." "Then I'm going." "Not a second longer!" "Grace was conducted through the wretched living quarters bestowed upon the slaves, with their pitiful, leaky cabins." "Her actions would mean an absolute enrichment of these people's lives." "There was no doubt about that" "or was there?" "Actually, Grace did not see much of the glow she had hoped for that could have convinced her no one would end up like her little, pale yellow canary." "These were human beings but of the kind on whom pain had been inflicted, Grace thought as she was suddenly interrupted by a strangely exotic accent..." "When we were slaves we were not required to offer thanks for our supper" "and for the water we drank and the air we breathed." "Nobody needs to say thank you..." " But..." " But what?" "You mean there's something we ought to be thankful for?" "I didn't mean "but", I meant "and"." "And..." "There's no reason to be grateful for anything as natural as your freedom." "I'm the first to apologize for everything you and your people have been subjected to." "Those gates should have been unlocked years ago." "Only 70 years ago!" "But before that, of course they were completely justified." "No..." "No, no, no." "You misunderstand me." " What can I say?" " You needn't say nothing at all." "We've heard of your kind." "A society lady who spends her time rescuing wretched niggers." "I should like to say thank you." "Missy done give her time and effort to helping' us." "Time I bet she could have spent on all kinds of different things." "'Cause t'was perfect justice when God made some of us slaves and not others." "The nigra is violent by nature." "Oh, I know it ain't popular to say so." "And it ain't 'cause of Burt that I say so." "No, Victoria did not base her perception only on her experience of her husband though God knows it weighed heavily." "Burt was a useless eejit whose character Victoria regrettably, so far in vain, had done her best to improve by hitting him on any given occasion no matter how much he threatened to take his life by throwing himself into Manderlay's deep well." "Grace looked at Wilhelm, the old house slave, and understood:" "He had not brought her here for anybody to thank her." "He just wanted her to see them all." "The unfortunate flock he rightly feared would have few chances beyond the perimeter fence." "Living proof of the devastating power of oppression." "Listen up..." "It's all been put on paper." "We just needed to check the wording' first being' as these things are legal and binding'." "Bingo?" " What are these?" " They're the contracts, Ma'am." "The family has been so considerate to offer us all employment." "Grace was not a lawyer and unqualified to assess the contract she that held in her hand." "But she feared that any judge in the county would deem it fair and proper." "It appeared to Grace that instead of "employee"" "they might as well have retained the old term, "slave"." "A body would only sign it if he or she was utterly ignorant of life in a liberal society." "Or, if he or she really had no choice." "Folks, I suppose that you're in urgent need of cash." " Mark?" " Cash?" "I once knew this fella from a little township nobody'd know the name of so there ain't no grounds to mention what it was called." "He had cash." "Not piles of it." "We are prepared to lend you some money as covered by this other paper." "And we can also set up a store here, if you like." "After all, it's a long way to town." "And if you buy enough for all of us" "I bet you liable to get a real nice bulk discount and the goods'll be cheaper than in town." "Ain't that right, Miss Grace?" "I have no idea." " Please sign, everybody." " What this be?" "What it is?" "Here..." "All right, let's go." " No, turn it off." " Damn it!" "You said I didn't have the power to help Tweety, and you were right." " I was a child then." " So, what is it this time?" "This time I have the power to act." "You said so back in Dogville." "That your power would be mine, too." "And that I could use it in my own way." "That power was to carry on the family firm." "That I was open to new ideas." "The power you ask for now will undoubtedly be applied to something that's foolish at best..." "Daddy, you promised." "You were a bastard to Mother but when you promised her something, she got it." "Okay..." "You've been given what I promised you." "Maybe things haven't been split right down the middle but this is as far as I'm prepared to go." "I want nothing to do with your plans." "And you won't be able to get in touch with me if you need me to get you out of trouble, because, fortunately, my dear you'll have no idea where I am." " Daddy, I'd like to take Joseph." " No." "I need a lawyer to sort out paperwork." "No..." "No." "Never!" "Never!" "I'd never let Joseph go." "He's the only man who can draw up a contract so there's only one possible interpretation." "Though I haven't needed that talent as of yet" "I still might need it one day!" " I'll give you Viggo and Bruno for him." " Never!" "I've given you my best associates, and you know it!" "Daddy, I was meant to be given half." "If Mother had been alive..." "Oh, damn it, Grace!" "So, that very day and into the early hours" "Joseph employed the celebrated unambiguous phrases his previous employer had given him so little opportunity to practice." "New contracts needed drawing up and old ones needed nullifying." "All with the astonishing goodwill that parties always evince in the company of rapid-firing machine pistols." "These are the deeds of gift." "Transfer the property to the former slaves in joint ownership." "The last document is your contract of employment, by this community," "Employment?" "I... don't quite get what you mean by that." "It'll be without pay and the right of termination is in the hands of the employer." " But nevertheless..." " Manual labor." "For you and your family and Mr Mays." "Hard labor." "Say something, Bingo." "My father's back ain't so strong." "He climbed up to reach the chandelier one Christmas Day and he fell off the banister and struck a table." "Well, that's what happens when you've got chandeliers." "When I consider your understanding of the worth of other human beings has reached the desirable stage" "you and Mr Mays and your family will be allowed to go." " Go?" "And leave our home?" " Yes." "Even starting from scratch your prospects will be a lot better than your former laborers' would have been." "With regards to the presence of me and my men:" "We'll only act as your counselors." "The guns are merely a precaution in case of any threats to the new community." "We intend to stay here but only until the first harvest is home." "After which any of the new shareholders who wishes to do so may cash in his or her deed of gift and receive a dividend." "Will you collect your deeds?" "Mark...?" "Nobody was enthusiastic or confident about these legal formalities." "But Grace could see beyond this." "And if she saw little else but fear and disquiet in all these eyes at least she saw gratitude in one, single pair." "Namely, in Wilhelm's mild, old gaze." "Burt!" "Got a deed of gift here that ain't been accepted." "Will Mr Burt approach and take delivery of his deed of gift." "Mr Burt." "Mr Burt?" "Burt had actually prepared his escape from his ferocious wife." "Despite her lack of faith in his abilities" "Burt had succeeded in meeting a woman through the fence and she had agreed to help him to abscond." "And there he was, waiting at the agreed place at the agreed time." "A helping hand, the woman had said." "What a coincidence that two women should come to the aid of the Manderlay slaves at the same time:" "Grace, and Burt's "helping hand"." "And the similarities between them were also peculiar:" "Young, beautiful, white." "In male company." "Actually, male company in alarming numbers." "Where's the nigger?" "Grace had moved into the freed plantation among its new shareholders." "She was there as a guard, no more." "But no one could stop her from using this beautiful spring to make her own observations on the people of Manderlay." "Hoping to spot the burgeoning change in character that freedom ought to bring." "But, unfortunately she saw little of just that." "She saw Victoria looking down the well in hopes of a glimpse of the body of Burt." "She saw Flora and Elizabeth swooning for Timothy, as ever." "She saw the men spending their time on card games playing for tufts of cotton under their leaking roof." "And she saw how everybody ignored Mark, not knowing he was never able to give an intelligible answer to anything." "We called him Puddin' Head, but his real name wasn't Puddin' Head." "Grace saw Victoria beating her son for stealing a moldy cookie." "And she saw the unstoppable hierarchy of the beatings." "Victoria beating Ed, Ed beating Milton, and Milton beating Willie who vented his frustration further down the food chain, on Claire who far too rarely managed to make use of the window that her loving father Jack had installed as an emergency entrance." "Which also allowed her to fall asleep every night to her favorite view of the twinkling stars." "Every noontide, Grace witnessed with pity how the former slaves stood on the parade ground with its mysterious numbers beneath Mam's balcony as if nothing at Manderlay had changed." "However, one of them did not submit to this too-soothing power of habit:" "Timothy, of course." "In a flash, his exotic pride almost took Grace's breath away." "This day Grace walked on past the old Peach House where the whites were put to work on almost needless little repairs on her way to the barn housing her gangsters." " So how's everyone doing?" " I'm afraid the men got nothing to do." "It's not good for the moral." "Your father always came up with something." "I bet he did." "But it's patience that's required." "Not this much patience, Niels says." "His grandpa was a cotton grower." "He says the cotton should have been sown ages ago." " The soil doesn't look ready." " Might be because nobody's plowed it." " Maybe things are different here." " No, ma'am, don't reckon so." "Well, if it should have been sown surely the people here would be the first to know." "Grace didn't want to impose." "Her contact with the former slaves had been limited to brief greetings." "But now it was time for a talk with some meat to it." "Excuse me." "Sir?" "Mark." "May I ask you something?" "It's about planting the cotton." "I've been around for sowing' and harvesting'." "And birth and death." "Right." "So when should the cotton be planted?" "There's strict rules for that." "You can't mess around with that sort of thing." "Manderlay's always been renowned for the precision of its harvest." "The swallows always migrate right afterwards." "They settle here for the night on their way across the marshes." "But the planting?" "It's a science, my dear lady, and the weather plays a fearsome role." "Yes, yes." "And when will it be time this year?" "Not too soon and not too late." "Yes, but when?" "Should the cotton have already been planted?" "I'm not the sorta fella to pass on information unless I'm damned sure." "Unless the facts of the matter are one hundred percent." "In other words, the facts need be beyond dispute." "Do you know when to plant?" " No." " I'd better ask Wilhelm." "Is he home?" "This morning he went to the bath house." "He'd gotten frayed around the edges, as they say." " It's a funny thing..." " I'm sorry." "I'll go find him myself." "Excuse me, Wilhelm, I've come about the fields." "The fields should have been plowed and harrowed three weeks ago." "And the cotton planted 2 weeks ago." "Does everybody know that?" "Oh, yes, but I reckon they're thinkin' somebody else oughta go out into the fields first." "In the old days Overseer Mays would've driven us out there." "Maybe it's because nobody really trust you, Missy." "Yeah, but Wilhelm, they could be doing something else instead." "Repairs to their homes..." "They badly need it." "The cabins have always been a sore spot." "But Mam said we ain't got no materials to fix 'em up." "We'll need what we make on the cotton." "How else will people survive on their own?" "Yeah, if folks felt they was given something'." "Something brought out by this, these new times." "That made their lives better in a convincing way." "Right here and now!" "I don't know what that might be, but..." " But we don't have time for that." " We've been forced to sow late before." "The harvest might be improved if we planted a bit late." "Even says that in Mam's Law." " Mam's Law?" " Yes, Mam's Law." "It's all the rules for running the plantation." "But we weren't allowed to read it." "It was just for Mam and the family." "Only for Mam and the family, Grace thought." "Certainly no more." "And there on Mam's bed skimming through the book, filled with bizarre and vicious regulations she came upon a page that looked strangely familiar." "A table with numbers from one to seven." "Somewhere Grace had seen something similar, for sure." "Mam's Law revealed it all:" "The Manderlay plantation with its glamorous front mansion and pitiful rear where the slaves had been kept in an iron grip by these very numbers." "They represented the psychological division of the Manderlay slaves." "Sammy was a Group 5:" "a Clownin' Nigger." "The formidable Victoria was of course a Number 4: a Hittin' Nigger." "No wonder her husband Burt had accepted "a helping hand"" "even if it was another color from his own." "Wilma and Mark were Losin' Niggers." "Wilhelm was a 2: a Talkin' Nigger." "Flora was a Weepin' Nigger." "Et cetera." "There were Pleasin' Niggers and Crazy Niggers by the dozen." "The final category, Number 1 :" "Proudy Niggers consisted nowadays of Timothy, who was of course not there." "And Elizabeth." "No..." "It said 7, not 1." "She was a Pleasin' Nigger, also known as a chameleon." "A person who could transform herself into exactly the type the beholder wanted to see." "This was how the slave system had been kept alive so long at Manderlay:" "Bondage, even through psychology." "As Grace, in deep thought, gazed across the fields of Manderlay she recalled another page in Mam's Law dealing with the weeding of the paths in the romantic "Old Lady's Garden"." "The name of the band of woodland that skirted the plantation." "Trees and tree trunks, Grace thought." "So there were materials at Manderlay, after all." "Excuse me..." "May I ask you all something?" "Isn't it true that somebody who's even poor and colored can still take the trouble to maintain their home?" "How dare you?" "You think colored folks prefer holes in their roof, and wallowing in mud?" "Then all you need to do is mend those holes." "But I told you." "There ain't never been those kind of materials at Manderlay." "No materials...?" "That's not true." "When I'm in the fields I see timber wherever I look." "Waiting to be turned into boards for a roof." "Or an extension or maybe a whole new cabin." "That be Mam's garden." "You can't cut that down." "And why can't we cut down The Old Lady's Garden?" "Have you spent that many happy hours on your knees weeding her romantic paths?" "That's true." "There's loads of timber." "We ain't seen it as anything but The Old Lady's Garden." "I don't know what you think, but to me it sounds like a splendid idea." "And at a stroke, these seated, reclining, resting people had turned into people going full tilt." "Walking, running, working people." "Without anyone having to threaten them with "The Lady's Hand"" "as Grace had been told the great whip was called." "And Grace had won a kind of victory." "A small beginning of something that would one day erase all the negative, inherited behavior patterns at Manderlay." "But the appetite for improving the living quarters unfortunately exceeded that for preparing the fields." "A few of the former slaves had volunteered and with the white family and Grace they made up a sort of gang to prepare the soil for the seeds." "Under the gaze of a hostile Timothy with his mysterious white handkerchief." " He wasn't born here?" " He's a Munsi." "It's a line of African royalty." "It's a very proud line." "He don't drink or gamble like the others be doin' with their little tufts of cotton money." "T'was Mam's Law." "We weren't allowed no real money." "Grace knew about the clever system of currency in Mam's Law." "Not real money that you could use in the outside world." "The Munsi don't gamble 'cause they don't believe in winnings." "They believe you have to be humble to your crops and only take what's absolutely necessary." "I've never heard of these Munsi before but I believe I once heard of the Mansi." "They different." "They was slaves of African kings." "They gamble..." "They is true mischief, Timothy say." "So Timothy has prejudices, as well." " What?" " Oh, nothing." "I was just thinking aloud." " So you find company, Flora." " No, no." "I was on my way out, anyway." "Timothy?" "Let me tell you one thing." "I know you don't like me." "And don't trust me." "And I can see why." "Although our ideals differ, you have a pride within you that I believe will one day be the salvation of everybody at Manderlay." "Let me tell you one thing, too!" "You got fine words, a posse of gangsters, and your white skin." "Somethin' folks here seem to fall for, but I ain't fooled." "You're not interested in us." "Not as human beings." "It's tough telling people apart when they're from another race." "We whites have committed irreparable crimes against an entire people." "Manderlay is a moral obligation, because we made you." "Luckily, I'm just a nigger who don't understand such words." "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've come here for the company of my girl and that ain't nothin' for you to see." "Black hides meeting'..." "And if I were you, I'd leave now before things get too nasty." "Grace regarded Timothy's hostility as a challenge." "The very next day she took a step to dispel his claim that as a white she was incapable of caring for blacks as individuals." "She'd had a chat with Venus about her maladjusted son Jim." "Venus had revealed that Jim's behavior was merely that of a budding, but frustrated, artist." " Tell me, have you seen Venus?" " Nobody here wants your charity." "I have something for Jim." "I've had a good look at his face since our chat and you're right." "It does possess an artist's sensitivity." " This is far too much..." " No, no, no!" "Go on, call him." "This is for him." "Jim, come on out here with me and Miss Grace, baby." "These are for you, because we believe in you." "Now run along and paint your fantastic pictures." "Never mind close-minded folks who think they know what art is meant to look like." "Give them hell from me, Jim!" "Excuse me, but I ain't Jim." "I'm Jack." "That's Jim." "It is tricky." "I've never been able to tell them apart, either." "They're both colored and they both got curly hair." "Why look any deeper than that?" "To be honest, Grace had never been quite sure which was Jim and which was Jack." "A blunder like that would, in her former life merely have occasioned a little laughter." "In her life at Manderlay it was... disastrous." "But like her father, she didn't take long to change defeat into anger energy and a counterattack." "This is what has created all this resistance." "Even you regard it as almost sacred, don't you?" "I must admit it's played a right important part in my life." "That will be my next move." "They should be allowed to see it." "And understand it can't do them any more harm." "I wouldn't advise it, Missy." "Presenting it to them would be like showing a child the rod with which it is to be beaten." "It must be made public but we ain't all ripe for it." "All right." "We'll have to see about ripening you, and quickly." "I'm not talking about the meetings I've organized where hardly anybody came." "I mean teaching with a timetable." "Old-fashioned, hands on schooling." "I've got something for you to do." "It even involves bossing people about." "At noon tomorrow I'm giving my first lesson to all Manderlay's former slaves." "It'll be your job to make sure they're there." " No excuse for not showing up." " And the family?" "No, they're pretty well teaching themselves." " Are you listening to me?" " It's 'cause Niels just got a great hand" "What?" "Who are you?" "My name is Doctor Hector." "Do excuse me a moment." "I'll have to pay my way out of this round." "I don't believe you possess any cards of real significance." "You have a poker player's face." "You see here my entire enterprise." "I've never gained access to Manderlay before." "So when I drove by today and saw the gates were open" "I took it as a sign of new times." " What exactly do you do?" " I entertain." "Party games, card games, and the like." "Well, nowadays mainly the latter." "You play for money." "But I do more than play." "I cheat." "And you don't object to revealing this business secret of yours?" "Oh, to some people, but not to you." "If you and I establish the business relationship I'm anticipating you'll know exactly what to expect." "And what can I expect?" "Eighty percent." "You know all the problems that arose when our beloved new deal was imposed in '65." "Plantation owners had plenty of land, but nobody to work it." "So they contracted with their former slaves." "But they didn't have the same hold on the rascals as in the old days." "Of course they lent them money." "But quite a few of the nigras actually saved up and paid off their debts." "So the plantation owners got worried." " I bet they did!" " Oh, yeah." "That's where my idea came in." "I went to the plantations with the full backing of the owners to entertain their employees, and they were sorely in need of diversion." "We just had a little game of cards." "If anyone was close to repaying his debt I would take the shirt off their back." "And I am prepared to offer you the very same service today, Ma'am." "You are not convinced." "Let me give you another token of my profound loyalty." "I have here a letter from a man by the name of Stanley." "He asked me to smuggle it out." "Perhaps you'd like to see it before it's mailed." "Listen, Mr Hector..." "Let me say I have never met a man whom I have so instantly despised so wholeheartedly, both for his personality and his occupation." "So you're turning down my offer?" "I never want to see you here again." "All right..." "Well, I am disappointed." "I shall nevertheless bestow upon you my thought for the day." "I indulge in word games." "I like to give my clients something to laugh or think about when I leave." "The best technique for a card shark is dealing from the bottom." "Look as if you're dealing from the top of the deck but instead you just take the bottom card." "One that you know." "Taking from the bottom means something else in social terms." "But it is what I do." "I take from the bottom." "It won't be hard to find me if you change your mind." "The letter was aimed at a Mr Miller one of the truckers who picked up cotton from Manderlay and the plantation's only real contact with the outside world." "It was short and to the point:" "We are being held prisoner by gangsters and coloreds at Manderlay." "Inform the police and please come to our aid with all due dispatch." "Indignation is a rare emotion for a gangster but such a state was what Grace's men experienced while they herded the colored people in for their lesson as Grace had reported on Dr Hector's trick of taking from the bottom." "It was hardly the sophisticated ambiguity of the term that had affected them so dramatically." "Welcome to our lesson." "Yes, I call it a lesson, as the term "meeting" seems to have scared some people out of attending." "I was comin'... but I was late." "You hadn't made it by the time we finished." "In the old days we heard the bell from the old clock in the hall." "T'was easier to keep up with time, but we never hear it no more." "Probably because nobody winds it up." "But now for the topic of this lesson:" "Working together." "Only four people from your wing helped to prepare the fields and only five helped to plant." "If I'd been a shareholder in this enterprise and had also been one of the five, I would have felt cheated." "Democracy means government by the people." "But, as it's not practical for everyone to sit in Congress a method by which people may express their views is required." "This method is called a ballot." "All right?" "So, let's try it out." "We should choose a problem." "Anything anyone can't decide on?" " If I may suggest a small matter..." " Please do." "I reckon the little broken rake is mine." "But Flora reckons it's hers." "It's my rake" "That's an excellent suggestion." "It's a great example." "I assume you all know of this dispute and feel able to have an opinion." "Who does the community think owns the rake?" "It could turn out to belong to both parties equally." "That would correspond nicely with the subject of this lesson:" "Working together, sharing together." "All right, so who thinks it's Elizabeth's rake...?" "Sammy?" "I think..." "I think it's Elizabeth's rake." "All right, all right!" "Slowly the point of Grace's discourse dawned on the majority." "Most thought the rake was Elizabeth's a few, that it was Flora's, and nobody, that it could be shared." "I still remain... undecided whether the rake is Elizabeth's or Flora's." "Right." "So, not surprisingly, neither party receives Mark's vote." "From now on the little broken rake belongs to Elizabeth." "There are winners and losers with balloting." "But the community has spoken." "Now Grace embarked on an explanation of Flora's difficulties raking without a rake and that joint ownership could have its advantages." "To make sure everyone understood the democratic principle they carried out another ballot at Jim's suggestion." "I wanna talk about Sammy be laughin' so loud at his own jokes and they ain't funny." "I been tryin' to sleep and I can't get no sleep 'cause he laughs so loud." "Maybe there can be a time when he can stop his jokes and stop laughin', so we can get some sleep." "Surely you can't vote on a man's laughter." "I'm hearing it's at sundown." "That's what I'm hearing." "So let's do a vote." "All right, so that's settled." "That's democracy." "Finally Wilhelm proposed that somebody should be responsible for winding up the clock with its small but penetrating chimes." "For mysterious reasons the fairly passive artist Jim was appointed despite the song and dance his mother kicked up." "Grace ended by announcing that the next day's topic would be:" "Our anger and how to communicate it." "Maybe someone would at least tell me what the time is." "Ask Timothy." "He always know what time it is." "He tell by the sun." "He always do that." "Or you can ask Wilhelm." "He's so old, he's from before the clock ever got here." "Wilhelm and Timothy each made his suggestion as to what the time was." "And they were astonishingly close." "Wilhelm thought it was 8 minutes to." "Timothy thought it was 5 minutes to." "Grace rejoiced quietly at this natural ability they found so straightforward." "But rapidly 2 factions emerged." "One which insisted it was 8 minutes to and the other would not hear anything but 5 minutes to." "They were thus able to draw on the day's learning and put it to the vote." "The result was 5 minutes to, by a small majority." "And so it was decided:" "The official time at Manderlay was five minutes to two." "Grace's first lesson took place in relative good humor." "But the second one that unfortunately proved unavoidable was severer in character." "Read!" "Daily ration of food for slaves from Category 7..." "Oh." "Oh, no. "1... is..."" "Six ounces of solid food." "They've always been given that." "No matter how little was in the stores." "That's a lot less than Category 7, for example." "Why should a "Proudy Nigger" have less to eat than an "Eye-Pleasin"' one?" "How can the way your head seems to be arranged have anything to do with the amount people are given to eat?" "I really don't know, either." "Not precisely." "Do you, Mr Mays?" "It could be just to punish them for their pride." "No, I just did what it said." "It mattered a lot to my mother that we followed these rules." "I know of many places where they got quite a bit less than six ounces." "And where they began to eat dirt." "It's a kind of custom coloreds have when food's scarce 'round here." "But it was forbidden under Mam's Law." "That's not what we're discussing here." "Don't you see what an affront it is, to divide people up like that?" "Folks is different." "Oxen and rabbits don't need equal shares, neither." "Both parties would come down with bellyaches." "Stop it!" "I'm not at all satisfied with what I've heard here today." "You're all speaking up for this foolishness." "I'm going to have to penalize you because so little effort has been made in these lessons." "Grace thought her idea of making the whites make up their faces which had seemed so just in her flash of anger that afternoon was perhaps a tad too much in the wrong direction." "Even though as a child Philomena would never have dreamt of going to the toilet without her black nanny." "Look at your Uncle Jim." "He's in the bathtub, learning how to swim." "Can we clean our faces now?" "Yes." "Yes, of course." "Well..." "Here comes the dust." "Then none of this will matter anymore." " What do you mean?" " There's gonna be a dust storm." "The plants have only just begun to grow." "It couldn't be worse." "But Manderlay's fields have never been harmed by a dust storm." "'Cause the windbreak was still in place." "Grace was not inclined to go into the meaning of these mysterious words." "Soon she'd convinced herself they had no meaning at all apart from spreading disquiet and despondency." "The next day's lesson on unleashing one's anger met little understanding from the assembly." "It was when they wound up voting and had decided to use Wilma's potatoes for seed as she was old and didn't have to eat much that they heard the wind." "The dust had come at this time for as long as anybody could remember." "But every year from time immemorial it had spared the newly planted cotton as the plantation had been cleverly shielded by a narrow band of trees known in common parlance as "The Old Lady's Garden"." "In the midst of the almost biblical darkness that fell on Manderlay" "Grace knew that even hand in hand with all the races of the world no army of gangsters could counter this:" "Nature's extravagant demonstration of power." "She could only watch as row upon row of the seedlings she had welcomed disappeared beneath the devastating dust." "Nobody could do a thing." "But apparently it did not mean that no one would try for now Grace discerned a rider out there." "He was riding like crazy." "Wherever he spotted a pile of dust beginning to grow he would break it up with his horse's hooves." "Whether it would help at all was hard to tell, but it was a battle no matter how senseless it might be." "Heroic and dangerous." "Timothy..." "Come back!" "Come back...!" "Timothy!" " Timothy!" " Timothy's gonna be all right!" "He knows these storms." "Miss Grace, you's head over heels for him." "You's a fool, Miss Grace." " Where'd you find him?" " He was behind the house." " Is he alive?" " I do believe I know what you askin'." " But what does it mean, to be alive?" " It means, is he breathing?" "Forget it." "Is he dead?" "We colored folks can be awfully hard to kill if we want it that way." "That very afternoon Timothy was back on his feet surveying the buildings for damage caused by the storm." "The dust had struck a devastating blow." "Hardest hit were the food stores in the dilapidated Peach House which had lost its roof." "Almost all of their provisions were now inedible." "On top of that, the pneumonia brought by the dust was inevitable." "The dust had got in everywhere particularly where no new boards provided weatherproofing." "Namely through the cracked glass in the window above Claire's bed." "Valuables, not to mention cash, were non-existent at Manderlay since the elegant clock on the mantelpiece turned out to be not Swiss, as Mam believed but a copy made quite locally and worth practically nothing." "The Freed Enterprise of Manderlay was bust." "Wilhelm and Grace were therefore under no illusions that anybody would attend class this day." "But then, one by one, the Manderlay flock began to appear." "I'm happy you're all here." "But I don't really have a lecture for you today." "I'd just like to say" "how badly I feel about this hopeless situation." "But of course words aren't much use to you." "No, Missy has learnt that much, at least." "But as regards hopelessness, it is something we do know a bit about." "There are a million plants out there beneath the dust." "If we can save but 50 of them perhaps we can grow a small quantity of great quality and get a better price for it." "I reckon we should make a move." "That is how a great disaster turned into a stroke of luck for Grace and how the people, with a common foe, the dust, as their excuse suddenly found themselves working together with their deadliest enemy to achieve the common goal as free, grown-up Americans." "Stanley and Bert had sown the fields with sticks so people could tell where to uncover the tender seedlings." "While Flora, ever so childishly, kept teasing Grace for her supposed romantic feelings towards Timothy." "Good night, old Wilma." "Good night, child." "We can talk for awhile before we go to sleep." "No, thank you, Wilma." "I'm not weary enough to go to bed yet." "A little walk helps." "A walk when a body ain't sleepy is a very good thing." "I do the same myself." " Good night." " Good night." "That everything seemed as moving along on its own could be nothing but welcomed by Grace." "But her lack of an active part to play had left her in a kind of vacuum and allowed other things inside her to claim attention." "Human things like instincts and emotions." "An ominous sense of homelessness and loneliness struck Grace." "Wandering about," "Grace suddenly found herself outside the wooden rear of the bath house." "Without warning, the homelessness transferred into a strange desire to move up that rusty pipe against the flow of dirty water into where naked bodies were being washed in cheap soap." "Black skin..." "Male and black manhood." "What Grace had felt at the bath house was undignified." "Shameful." "Her mind was meant to be devoted to policy at Manderlay." "A matter in which these thoughts had no business whatsoever." "Grace had forced herself to sleep, to rid her thoughts of those black bodies." "An achievement that was possible thanks to the stubbornness in Grace's family." "But the cotton seedling in her love-starved body did not give up." "It manifested itself as a dream." "Grace was in southern climes..." "There were women in exotic costumes and men in turbans." "Even in her sleep she hated with a passion any idea of allowing that her father might be right." "But it was a harem." "A group of black slaves appeared, bearing a huge charger of dates." "In a twinkling Grace lay among the dates trembling with pleasure as a flock of Bedouin satisfied her one by one with their noses." "And it was even more confusing when Timothy appeared and was both the slave bearing wine, hands shaking and the sheik himself, whose authoritative hands tested the size of Grace's most intimate orifices." " I must have overslept." " I'm sorry." "Claire's had another turn." "Yeah..." "Yeah, she's running a bad fever again." " She had anything to eat?" " Pork chops and baked chicken." "She's taken a little oatmeal, but it's hard to get into her." "She had lung trouble last year when the dust come, too." "But there was far more dust this year." "Honestly, you oughta go back home to the clean air and larders full of food." "We're all in this together, no matter how hard it gets." "And hard it will get." "I've seen what's left around here though some folks are still filling their bellies." "Right..." "We've got to talk about that." "Come on, it'll be all right, Rose." "I propose that we ration what we have left and spread our provisions over a month until we can harvest more from the vegetable gardens." "And, as I hear there are so very few beans and potatoes left" "I think we should give them to Rose, who needs them for Claire." "What's left will be shared out equally among the rest of us." "Excuse me..." "The rest of us?" "That goes for us, too?" " Of course it does." " Your father wouldn't have approved." "Joseph swears it couldn't be called food at all." "Legally speaking'." "Your father used to let us obtain stuff." "Surely we could steal something from somewhere." "But I suppose that's no good, either, Miss Grace." "I'm afraid you're one tough cookie." "Maybe I am." "Sadly, the most nourishing fare the estate could provide had not improved Claire's condition much." "But she needed meat, and Timothy knew it." "So now they'd have to do without the old donkey on the treadmill." "It was not a good portent of the level of morale that the gangsters were trying to fix the car from the ravages of the dust." "But luckily, Joseph, who was able to interpret the most difficult of texts had met his match in the 1923 Ford owner's manual." "As time went by, the scattered cotton plants grew side by side with its denizens' hunger now that the little donkey meat that was left was reserved for Claire." "Grace found herself in the peculiar situation of joining the women in what had been completely forbidden under Mam's Law:" "Namely, the southern tradition of eating dirt." "Having given up on the automobile manuals" "Joseph had found a quaint phrase in the agreement he had originally made with Grace's father regarding his employment." "The wording could be interpreted to mean that certain circumstances obliged an employee to obey a higher authority than his boss." "The authority in this case being his stomach." "The good news was that, though the drought had been hard on the fields" "Stanley and Timothy had invented a weapon to deploy against it." " Wait, wait..." " Watch out!" "It's coming..." "But the best news of all was Claire who had miraculously gained so much strength that she could empty her plate of good food." "Always in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep but nobody was looking but even so..." "If Grace had thought hunger would stop her forbidden sensual fantasies actually the opposite was more the case." "Flora, what's goin' on with the chickens?" "Are they fighting?" "You mean the 4 whites after the black?" "You want I should open the door and have a peek?" "No..." "Mind you, that little black hen real proud." "Wouldn't surprise me, them others took the chance to give her the odd peck." "Now, don't you tease me, Flora." " Goodnight, then." " Goodnight." "Flora had teased Grace before with the little black hen." "But they were hurting in there." "No doubt about it." "And to make everything far worse that heat in her loins came back in spite of the chicken's cry for help." "Or may even have been intensified by it." "Devastated, humiliated and overcome by fear for her sanity she fled." "In a fit of madness, or what others would call horniness she threw herself onto her bed on her tummy forgot about shame and political correctness and did what she had not done since childhood when she had not yet known it was so infinitely wrong:" "She pressed herself onto the knot she had instinctively formed by bunching her quilt." "Whether it was pleasurable or painful is hard to tell but she kept at it." "It was beyond her control." "With no regard for the other women or common decency in general the pulsating explosions in her nether regions took over her world." "Who knows how it would have concluded had there not appeared at that very moment, fortunately for Grace, a person shaking her back to a state of self-defense." "Miss Grace!" "You gotta come quick, Miss Grace!" "She dead." "I took such care of her..." "I fed her the good meat..." "She'd been eatin'..." "She dead..." "Now she's dead!" " I said come on!" " She'd been eatin'..." "No!" "She hadn't been eatin'..." "This 'un had!" "Y'gonna tell 'em, Wilma?" "I was so hungry..." "I get so dizzy..." "And my legs hurt when I'm hungry." "Our good friend and Claire's beloved Wilma been visiting in the window while we slept." "She emptied Claire's plate every, single night!" "T'was easy as pie, since that window could be opened from the outside." "I've eaten so much dirt in my time..." "My teeth can't take it no more." "She killed our little girl." "Jack..." "Jack, she was sick." "Miss Grace, Rose didn't worry much about feeding her during the day 'cause she ate so much at night." "I want Wilma punished for killin' my little girl!" "I want this matter put to the vote." "I want Wilma punished for killin' my little girl." "I want justice, or I'll kill her myself right now!" "Let me go..." "Stop!" " We will talk about it tomorrow!" " They're killing my little girl!" "Stop it!" "And so the next evening a gathering took place under the magnificent, clear, twinkling, starry sky of Manderlay." "Now we've heard 'em all, Wilhelm." "Wilma showed no mercy to our Claire so no mercy oughta be shown to her." "She must die!" "Jack..." "Killing old Wilma won't bring Claire back." "All we want is justice." "You've said so many times that we're entitled to it!" "I propose... that  she be banished from Manderlay for stealing food in an emergency." "She probably won't survive that anyway, as old as she is." "After all, we don't know if the food made any difference in Claire's fate." "Wilma can't have known whether it would kill her." "But she didn't care when it came to risking somebody else's life." "That of our little girl!" "All Wilma saw was a plate nobody was touching." "She was hungry." "What do you think the rest of us was?" "All of us here ate what we'd agreed." "What do you think little Claire was?" "We're all hungry..." "and that just makes it far, far worse!" "I'd like to ask y'all to vote on Jack and Rose's motion." "All those who believe that Wilma deserves to die, raise your hands." "Thank you." "Thank y'all." "Stop!" "Grace?" "I thought we were the ones who made the decisions here." "That's what you always told us." "Or maybe it's only sometimes." "Of course not." "It's always." "Then they's the decision you're here to defend, ain't they?" "So let me go across and do it." "No..." "If anybody is going to do it, it's going to be me." "It must not be an act of vengeance." "That's alright by me." "As long as she suffers as much as Claire." "That will be up to me." "I'll let you know when it's over." "Grace..." "Be so kind as to tell me..." "What they decide?" "Am I gonna die?" "No, Wilma, you're not going to die." "What you mean?" "I mean the ballot did not go Jack's way." "You're not gonna die." "They didn't think Claire would have eaten the food on her plate, anyway." "And anyhow, she'd certainly have died from pneumonia from the dust." "Did they really say that?" "Yes..." "They really said that." "If you knew how terrible the waiting' was..." " I'm just so weary." " I know." "I know you are." "But now you can sleep easy." "Yes..." "I can." "Lie down and get some sleep." "You are the daughter I might have had." " Lie down." " Will you stay till I sleep?" "I'll do that Wilma..." "Here..." "Lie down." "Wilma?" "Harvest time finally did arrive and the cotton went safe into the sacks." "Despite the fewer bushes, the harvest was splendid." "It was as if all the trials and tribulations had made the cotton extra white and the fibers extra strong." "And, even at current prices, it would bring in a record sum." "Although nothing was the way it had ever been the harvest was as precise as always at Manderlay." "The moment the last tuft of cotton was in the sack, the swallows arrived dropping from the skies towards the marshes." "Everyone observed the sight in awe and for a moment it was greater than all the words and politics in the world." "The old gin was as ready as ever." "It had been for a week." "Greased, stripped down and reassembled by Sammy who had teamed up with Niels." "They worked well in harness." "Niels had never found a joke funny so Sammy, the Clownin' Nigger, had given up trying to entertain him with his somewhat weak material." "Miss Grace?" "Edward!" "I hardly recognized you." "You've certainly changed the way you dress." "Yes." "Your father thought it was time for a change." "He's on his way into a new area of business." " Is Daddy here?" " No, he sent me with a message." "He says he'll be by a week, Monday, at eight in the evening." "He'll wait in the car outside the gates for 15 minutes, not a second longer." "The way he did in Dogville, he says, and the way he did with your mother." " When he asked her to marry him." " Something like that." "If you want to go, you better be there 'cause he says he'll just push on." " I know, I get the message." " All right, I'm on my way." " Take care, Miss Grace." " You, too, Edward." "Oh, Edward..." "Just tell Dad that new times have come to Manderlay." "Grace had no intention of going with her father when he arrived." "She had her own life now and it suited her just fine." "But she'd be at the gates, anyhow." "She just had to show him what she had achieved:" "A new and better Manderlay." "It was examination day for Stanley and the family." "Even though things had been going well recently when Stanley partook of his beer nobody'd be able to keep him from revealing what'd happened on the plantation, and thereby ruin it all." "Wilhelm had been skeptical about letting the whites talk to the drivers." "But Grace had insisted." "She trusted them." "Oh, Sammy...!" "Oh, Lord, Sam." "Eejit nigger!" "Are you totally useless?" "Sorry, Mr Mays." "I'm jokin'." "Stanley Mays and the family passed." "That very evening Grace pronounced them graduate Americans." "Although they were free to go, they had elected to stay as there was talk of hiring the family and Stanley permanently." "And before anybody knew it the money was in the bank from where it had been picked up by proud Timothy on horseback." "Niels and Sammy had fixed the car wisely without reference to the manual." " Thank you for everything." " Thank you." " What are you gonna do now?" " I don't know." "You could always go back to gangstering." " Where's Mr Robinson?" " Down in the cabin, shakin' hands." "Grace was touched by Mr Robinson's sudden social interest in the former slaves." "But it felt right when the car left." "It was time for Grace to say goodbye to power." "Brave and strong, thy men and women better this, than corn and wine." "Make us worthy, God in Heaven of this goodly land of Thine." "Hearts as open as our doorway" "liberal hands and spirits free" "Alabama, Alabama we will aye be true to thee." "He's watching you." " No, he's not." " He's watching you." "No, he's not." "I reckon it have somethin' to do with them gangsters leaving'." "See, honey, when you was boss, he was visitin' your kingdom." "Now you're visiting' his." "I reckon he wants you now..." "He should have some dinner." "I'm gonna go get him." " You gonna go get him?" " Uh-huh." " You gotta come get some dinner." " Quiet, woman." "In Mam's bedroom Grace recalled Flora's worrying, intimate details." "Sexual intercourse among the Munsi was determined by ancient traditions." "It would not appeal to Grace, Flora had said." "Not with Grace's modern ideas of equality of people and the sexes." "But Grace seemed to have left her progressive attitude at the table." "Now actually in the situation she had dreamed of it was all more bizarre than erotic." "Anyway, Grace had decided to hang on to this opinion." "Timothy, wake up!" "Timothy's horse had escaped when fires had been lit around the slave quarters while Grace was asleep." " What happened?" " I can't tell you." "You're gonna have to ask somebody else." " The gangsters took the money." " What?" "The gangsters took the money." "That's the answer." "And I reckon it's a pretty clear answer, too." "It certainly is very clear." "What makes you think so?" "When the party ended we all left the table to go and take a look at the money." "Timothy had hid it behind the red slope." "Timothy was meant to be keepin' an eye on the place, but he wasn't there." "And the box had been pulled up." "It was empty." "One of the gangsters dug up the money when he was pretending' to say goodbye." "But he couldn't have done it alone." "Someone must have told him where the box was." "And Sammy refused to admit it was him although he'd spent a whole lot of time with Niels." "And then everybody started yellin' and screamin' and folks is angry and no one's listenin'." "Stanley Mays and the family got away, I believe." "Although Philomena and Bertie got cut up real bad." "Elizabeth is dead, too, although that was mostly by accident." "It was too soon to send the guns away." "We weren't quite ready yet." "For once Grace had nothing to say." "She could but reproach herself for her joke to the gangsters about resorting to their former occupation if things got tight." " Wilhelm, I can't rouse Timothy." " No, I bet you can't." "He drank three bottles of hooch before we ate." "The Munsi don't drink." "Well, maybe..." "they do on special occasions." "Well, it certainly is lively around here!" "Didn't I tell you I didn't want to see you here again?" "Yes, but I haven't come to do a deal, I've come to conclude one." "And in the hope, of course, that you'll see I am an honest man." "I needn't have come back to settle up at all." "This is your 80%..." "Quite a tidy little sum, too, as you can see." "It's the money from our harvest." "I expect so." "It's that time of year." "See, I had a little game with a young man who came to see me." "I knew he'd come from here, so..." "I've made my humble return." "Don't you think you just might have been wrong about me?" "Who did you play for all this money?" "Well, it was a day ago now." "I'd have come sooner but I pass this black car with some gentlemen in dark coats." "They began to follow me shouting that I was going to die." "That I was a con man who dealt from the bottom." "What an accusation!" " It just took a while to get away." " Who was it?" "The nigra fellow arrived on horsesback." "What was his name...?" "Timothy." "That was it!" " Timothy, yeah, that was his name." " He's a Munsi." "They don't gamble." "Well, I know Munsi don't gamble." "I'm a bit of an expert in this field." "Hell of a time gettin' them to the gamin' table." "He's no Munsi." "In fact, he's what I'd call a splendid fella at the card table." "He just stayed being' splendid, no matter how much he lost." " He told everyone he was a Munsi." " Of course." "See, the girls were wild about the tales he told." "All the Munsi tales." "The proud African, the royal line." "You know, all that old-fashioned morality." "And the accent, of course." "So, on account of that, the girls was easy to bed." "I'm not even going to avail myself of your gratitude." "That's just the kind of fella I am." "Hey, ho!" "Now bless me if I can't come up with a motto for today..." "They say the Mansi are better hung than the Munsi." "Or, the Munsi are so up-stuck." "But the Mansi, how they fuck!" "Well, I'll be seein' you." "We can talk business another day." "Grace went to the last pages with the personal details on the slaves at Manderlay." "Where was Timothy, now?" "Yes, his name had a "1" beside it." "A Proudy Slave, as she'd read earlier..." "Or did it?" "She looked more closely at the hand-written number." "She compared it to the "7" next to Elizabeth's name." "The Pleasin' Nigger of the chameleon type." "Expert in changing character to whatever was opportune and what would titillate and enthrall the other person." "And then Grace could see it..." "Timothy's number was not a "1", but a "7"." "She had only wanted to read it as a "1 "." "There was even a note beside Timothy's name:" "Caution." "Diabolically clever." "Grace had called a final meeting for everybody at Manderlay." "For that evening, she had decided to leave the place forever." " With her father when he arrived." " Oh, you're all here." "I persuaded the community to assemble extraordinarily... for two ballots." "They can scarcely have anything to do with me anymore." " Don't be too certain of that." " Well, I am certain." "I've come to say goodbye." "If you've had 2 ballots today, that coincides with the 2 presents I brought." "Farewell presents, if you like." "The first... is this." "It's the money from our harvest." "Actually it's 80% of it." "A card shark kept the other 20% as commission." "He scammed the money off somebody from Manderlay in a game of cards." " So the gangsters didn't take it?" " No." "No, they didn't." "And I won't prolong the tension." "It was the treasurer who did it." "The man charged with looking after the money." "He was overcome by his eagerness to play." "Probably because he isn't a Munsi at all  but a Mansi." "However unimportant that may sound." "Which brings me to my second present." "This one." "Painful to you or not, it has to come out." "In this book which I still regard as the most abominable document ever written" "Timothy is listed as a Pleasin' Nigger." "A person who can change his appearance, as he has done." " Let me find the page..." " It's on page 104." "How do you know?" "I thought no slave had ever seen this book." "How do you know what's on page 104 of Mam's Law?" "Cause I wrote it." "It's all in my meticulous hand." "Mam and I were very young when the war suddenly ended and this new statute terrified us." "Terrified you?" "We tried to imagine what kind of world were these slave let out into." "Were they ready for it?" "Or more correctly..." "Was it ready for them?" "Legislators made promises, but we didn't believe them." "It was then that Mam urged me to commit to paper the way I thought things should be done here if everyone stayed on at Manderlay." "But it's a prolongation of slavery." "You might call it that." "You also might call it the lesser of two evils." "But did the others know that you wrote this book?" "Groups 2, 3 and 5..." "always knew." "A few members of the other groups were better off not knowing." "But everyone knows now." "I wrote Mam's Law for the good of everyone." "For the good of everyone." "For the good of everyone?" "How dare you?" "It's a recipe for oppression and humiliation." "From start to finish." "I think you've been reading it through the wrong spectacles" "Miss Grace, if I may take the liberty of saying so." "Then Wilhelm initiated Grace into the humane qualities of the lesser of two evils." "Mam's Law." "How it guaranteed food and shelter and allowed anybody to complain about their masters instead of blaming themselves for the life of no hope that they would surely have to lead in the outside world." "How the noonday parade was a blessing since the parade ground was the only place with shade in the heat." "How the numbered groups were determined by behavior patterns human beings resort to in order to survive in an oppressive community so that life could be made easier for each of them." "Since a Proudy Nigger (not that Manderlay had seen many, if any) survives by perceiving himself as proud and could be helped by this system to believe he was more persecuted and punished than the others." "Since a Clowinin' Nigger would benefit from the laughter that Mam's Law demanded of its master just as any other groups benefited from similar obligations." "How cash was forbidden so gambling was done with cotton money to prevent ruination and misery for the families." "Et cetera, et cetera." "Until Grace's head felt fair ready to explode." "Damn it, Wilhelm, they're not free!" " That's what matters!" " I call that a philosophical argument." "Which neatly brings me to the two ballots I just mentioned." "Was Mam's Law still relevant?" "We agreed that unfortunately it was as relevant now as it ever was." "America was not ready to welcome us Negroes as equals 70 years ago, and it still ain't." "And the way things are goin', it won't be in a 100 years from now." "So we agreed we'd like to take one step backwards at Manderlay and re-impose the old law." "Excuse me, but I'm going." "As for your going, I'd better tell you about the second of our ballots." "As you know, sadly, we lost Mam." "And unfortunately we've good and well frightened off her descendants." "In short:" "We lack a Mam." " No!" " You received every single vote." "Never." "With all your idealism" "I think you could enjoy being the guardian for a kind of menagerie of creatures who have no chance in the wild." "Just as you thought the notion of community would be good for us." "You were so sure, you permitted yourself to use force to convince us." "I'd be sorry if we had to do likewise." "What do you mean?" "Do you intend to keep me prisoner?" "Only until you understand the way you wanted us to understand." "The gate has been repaired and is closed." "The fences are in good shape, but they ain't particularly high." "Those fences..." "Come on!" "Two men with a rusty shotgun and a toy pistol." "How dumb do you really think we are?" "Too dumb to build a ladder if we'd really wanted to get away?" "Grace had spent a great deal of time on this meeting which, to her, didn't seem to be getting anywhere." "Her father and his car would be at the gate at eight." "That was in half an hour." "She had no ladder." "And she was on her own and guarded by many." "Just how was she to get out of Manderlay?" "When was a section of the fence always down?" "Grace would have to change her tactics rapidly if she was to make the rendezvous." "All right." "I'll do as you want." "Not from my heart." "You couldn't expect that." "But as my only option." "And you needn't be scared." "I'll obey your beloved law." "So we'd better start by dealing with the present matter:" "Timothy." "A slave from Group 7 has committed a theft that almost ruined us all." "As Mam's Law does not prescribe any punishment for stealing money" "I shall have to be creative." "What was it you said, Flora?" "About planting a bottle of Rhenish wine?" "I believe there's a bottle of Rhenish wine under Timothy's saddle..." "Don't you?" "So that's what I seen when I went there yesterday..." "If it wasn't a bottle of Rhenish wine!" "There was still ten minutes until her punctual father would arrive to wait his 15 minutes and not a second longer." "Just enough time for a verbal farewell salute." "Timothy, you can stop being proud and silent." "Cry... and shout and beg for mercy  like the Mansi you are." "The Mansi who you despise so much." "It's that hatred Timothy and the rest of you bear towards yourselves that you'll never make me accept!" "You are a cheat of the lowest the lowest kind..." "And Wilhelm and all of you who follow him are merely traitors to your race." "I hope one day your fellow Negroes uncover your betrayal and punish you for it!" "You make me sick!" "I'm sure you're quite right, Miss Grace." "Most likely it's impossible to revile us niggers enough." "But what I don't get is, why it makes you so angry?" "What do you mean?" "Aren't you forgetting something?" "You made us!" "Probably the only thing that could have stopped the lady with the whip was the cheerful tinkle that announced her father's presence." "She needed his support now." "Manderlay, too, really was a place the world would be better off without." "Grace recognized her father's handwriting. "Dear Girl," it said." "Dear Girl." "So you tricked your father yet again." "I waited the fifteen minutes first, but I am too kind-hearted." "So I popped over to the fence and peeked inside to check that you were okay." "To my great surprise it really looked as if you had a good grip on things, for once." "I'm proud of you, my girl." "I hope we meet up some day so you can tell me what you meant by 'new times at Manderlay'." "Love, Your dumb old Dad." "Ballots could be unrivaled but determining the time by public debate was rarely feasible." "That was quite apparent." "Grace had but a few seconds to choose in which direction to flee from her swarthy pursuers who as her father had teasingly predicted, were carrying torches." "Grace was in a hurry and did not notice Burt, the former fugitive with a liberal attitude toward race who never did make it far." "Grace was angry." "Manderlay had fossilized in a picture of this country that was too negative." "America was a many-faceted place, no doubt about it." "But "not ready" to accept black people?" "You really could not say that." "America had proffered its hand, discreetly perhaps but if anybody refused to see a helping hand he really only had himself to blame."