Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry [43]
ASAGAI Was it your money?
BENEATHA What?
ASAGAI Was it your money he gave away?
BENEATHA It belonged to all of us.
ASAGAI But did you earn it? Would you have had it at all if your father had not died?
BENEATHA No.
ASAGAI Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man? I never thought to see you like this, Alaiyo. You! Your brother made a mistake and you are grateful to him so that now you can give up the ailing human race on account of it! You talk about what good is struggle, what good is anything! Where are we all going and why are we bothering!
BENEATHA AND YOU CANNOT ANSWER IT!
ASAGAI (Shouting over her) I LIVE THE ANSWER! (Pause) In my village at home it is the exceptional man who can even read a newspaper … or who ever sees a book at all. I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem strange to the people of my village. But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly. At times it will seem that nothing changes at all … and then again the sudden dramatic events which make history leap into the future. And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution. And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred. But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and I will not wonder long. And perhaps … perhaps I will be a great man … I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course … and perhaps for it I will be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire …
BENEATHA The martyr!
ASAGAI (He smiles) … or perhaps I shall live to be a very old man, respected and esteemed in my new nation … And perhaps I shall hold office and this is what I’m trying to tell you, Alaiyo: Perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power. Don’t you see that there will be young men and women—not British soldiers then, but my own black countrymen—to step out of the shadows some evening and slit my then useless throat? Don’t you see they have always been there … that they always will be. And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even … actually replenish all that I was.
BENEATHA Oh, Asagai, I know all that.
ASAGAI Good! Then stop moaning and groaning and tell me what you plan to do.
BENEATHA Do?
ASAGAI I have a bit of a suggestion.
BENEATHA What?
ASAGAI (Rather quietly for him) That when it is all over—that you come home with me—
BENEATHA (Staring at him and crossing away with exasperation) Oh—Asagai—at this moment you decide to be romantic!
ASAGAI (Quickly understanding the misunderstanding) My dear, young creature of the New World—I do not mean across the city—I mean across the ocean: home—to Africa.
BENEATHA (Slowly understanding and turning to him with murmured amazement) To Africa?
ASAGAI Yes! … (Smiling and lifting his arms playfully) Three hundred years later the African Prince rose up out of the seas and swept the maiden back across the middle passage over which her ancestors had come—
BENEATHA (Unable to play) To—to Nigeria?
ASAGAI Nigeria. Home. (Coming to her with genuine romantic flippancy) I will show you our mountains and our stars; and give you cool drinks from gourds and teach you the old songs and the ways of our people—and, in time, we will pretend that—(Very softly)—you have only been away for a day. Say that you’ll come (He swings her around and takes her full in his arms in a kiss which proceeds to passion)
BENEATHA (Pulling away suddenly) You’re getting me all mixed up—
ASAGAI Why?
BENEATHA Too many things—too many things have happened today. I must sit down and think. I don’t know what I feel about anything right