Play With a Tiger and Other Plays. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ You mean, it’s got nothing to do with me.

      DAVE: That’s right, it’s got nothing to do with you.

      [ANNA withdraws from him into herself.]

      DAVE: Ah hell, Anna, she means nothing to me.

      ANNA: Then it’s terrible.

      [A pause.]

      DAVE: I don’t understand why I do the things I do. I go moseying along, paying my way and liking myself pretty well, then I’m sounding off like something, and people start looking at me in a certain way, and I think, Hey, man is that you? Is that you there, Dave Miller? He’s taken over again, the wild man, the mad man. And I even stand on one side and watch pretty awed when you come to think of it. Yes, awed, that’s the word. You should be awed too, Anna, instead of getting scared. I can’t stand it when you’re scared of me.

      ANNA: I simply want to run out of the way.

      DAVE: The way of what? Go on, tell, I want to know.

      ANNA: I want to hide from the flick-knives, from the tomahawks.

      DAVE [with a loud, cruel laugh – he is momentarily inside the wild man]: Jesus. Bloody Englishwoman, middle-class lady, that’s what you are. [mimicking her], Flick-knives and tomahawks – how refined.

      ANNA [in the voice of ANNA MACCLURE]: Dave, man, stand up and let it go, let it go.

      [DAVE slowly stands. He switches off the light – the walls vanish, the city comes up. Back on the carpet, stands relaxed.]

      ANNA: Who are you?

      DAVE: Dave Miller, the boss of the gang, South Street, Al Capone’s territory … Chicago.

      ANNA: What’s your name?

      DAVE: Dave Miller.

      ANNA: No, in your fantasy.

      DAVE: Baby Face Nelson. No, but the way I dreamed him up, he was a sort of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

      ANNA: Oh, don’t be so childish.

      DAVE: That was the point of this exercise I thought.

      ANNA: Sorry. Go ahead.

      DAVE: I’m fifteen years old. I’m wearing a sharp hat, such a sweet sharp hat – pork-pie, cleft in the middle, set on side. The hat is in dark green. My jacket is two yards wide across the shoulders, nipped in at the waist, and skirted. In a fine, sweet cinnamon brown. Trousers in forest green, very fancy. My shirt is the finest money can buy, one dollar fifty, at Holy Moses Cut Price Emporium. In deciduous mauve. My tie is orange and black in lightening stripes. I wear velveteen spats, buttoned sweetly up the side, in hearth-rug white. I have a key-chain with a key on it, probably about six feet long, which could sweep the pavement if it hung free, but it never does, because we stand, lounging on the street corner, our home, men of the world, twirling the chain between our fingers, hour after hour through the afternoons and evenings. That year I’m a shoe-shine boy, a news-boy and a drug-store assistant. But my life, my real sweet life is on the pavement. [speaking to someone] Jedd, see that broad? [waits for an answer] Gee, some dish, bet she’s hot. [waits again] See that dame there, Jesus Christ. [he wolf-whistles]

      [ANNA swanks, bottom wagging in front of him. DAVE whistles after her. He is echoed by a wolf-whistle from the street. ANNA wheels at the window to shut it.]

      DAVE: I told you, keep it open.

      [ANNA returns, squatting on the edge of the carpet.]

      DAVE: Jesus, Anna, when I think of that kid, of all us kids, it makes me want to cry.

      ANNA: Then cry.

      DAVE: The year of our Lord, 1936, all our parents out of work, and World War II on top of us and we didn’t know it.

      ANNA: Did you carry a knife?

      DAVE: We all did.

      ANNA: Ever use it?

      DAVE: Hell no, I told you, we were fine idealistic kids. That was my anarchist period. We stood twirling our keychains on the corner of the street, eyeing the broads and I quoted great chunks out of Kroptkin to the guys. Anyone who joined my gang had to be an anarchist. When I had my socialist period, they had to be socialists.

      ANNA: Go on.

      DAVE: Isn’t it enough?

      ANNA: I’m waiting for the tomahawk. You’re seven years old and you scalp all the nasty adults who don’t understand you.

      DAVE: OK. I was a Red Indian nine-tenths of my childhood. OK. [in his parody of an English upper-class accent] There is no point whatever in discussing it … OK. Somewhere in my psyche is a tomahawk-twirling Red Indian … Anna? Do you know what’s wrong with America?

      ANNA: Yes.

      DAVE: At the street corners now the kids are not prepared to fight the world. They fight each other. Every one of us, we were prepared to take on the whole world single-handed. Not any longer, they know better, they’re scared. A healthy country has kids, every John Doe of them knowing he can lick the whole world, single-handed. Not any more.

      ANNA: I know.

      DAVE: You know. But you’re scared to talk. Everyone knows but they’re scared to talk. There’s a great dream dead in America. You look at us and see prosperity – and loneliness. Prosperity and men and women in trouble with each other. Prosperity and people wondering what life is for. Prosperity – and conformity. You look at us and you know it’s your turn now. We’ve pioneered the golden road for you …

      ANNA: Who are you lecturing, Anna MacClure?

      DAVE: OK, OK, OK. [he flops face down on the carpet]

      [ANNA puts her arms around his shoulders.]

      DAVE: If you think I’m any safer to touch when I’m flat than when I’m mobile you’re wrong. [He tries to pull her down. She pulls away.] OK. [pause] Did I tell you I went to a psycho-analyst? Yeah, I’m a good American after all, I went to a psycho-analyst.

      ANNA [mocking him]: Do tell me about your psycho-analysis.

      DAVE: Yeah, now I refer, throwing it away, to ‘when I was under psycho-analysis’.

      ANNA: The way you refer, throwing it away, to ‘when I was a car salesman’, which you were for a week.

      DAVE: Why do you always have to cut me down to size?

      ANNA: So, how many times did you go?

      DAVE: Twice.

      [ANNA laughs.]

      DAVE: The first interview was already not a success. Now, doc, I said. I have no wish to discuss my childhood. There is no point whatever in discussing it. I want to know how to live my life, doc. I don’t want you to sit there, nodding while I talk. I want your advice, СКАЧАТЬ