Play With a Tiger and Other Plays. Doris Lessing

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      DAVE: It was no laughing matter. I talked for one hour by the clock, begging and pleading for the favour of one constructive word from him. But he merely sat like this, and then he said: ‘I’ll see you next Thursday, at five o’clock precisely.’ I said, it was no laughing matter – for a whole week I was in a trance, waiting for the ultimate revelation – you know how we all live, waiting for that revelation? Then I danced up to his room and lay on to his couch and lay waiting. He said not a word. Finally I said don’t think I’m resisting you, doc, please don’t think it. Talk doc, I said. Give. Let yourself go. Then the hour was nearly up. I may say, I’d given him a thumb-nail sketch of my life previously. He spoke at last: ‘Tell me, Mr Miller, how many jobs did you say you had had?’ My God, doc, I said, nearly falling over myself in my eagerness to oblige, if I knew, I’d tell you. ‘You would admit,’ he said at last, ‘that the pattern of your life shows, ho, hum, ha, a certain instability?’ My God, yes, doc, I said, panting at his feet, that’s it, you’re on to it, hold fast to it doc, that’s the word, instability. Now give doc, give. Tell me, why is it that a fine upstanding American boy like me, with all the advantages our rich country gives its citizens, why should I be in such trouble. And why should so many of us be in such trouble – I’m not an American for nothing, I’m socially minded, doc. Why are there so many of us in such trouble? Tell me doc. Give. And why should you, Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, citizen of England, be sitting in that chair, in a position to dish out advice and comfort? Of course I know that you got all wrapped up in this thing because you, uh, kind of like people, doc, but after all, to kinda like people doc, puts you in a pretty privileged class for a start – so few citizens can afford to really kinda like people. So tell me doc, tell me …

      ANNA: Well don’t shout at me, I’m not Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey.

      DAVE: You listen just like him – judging. In possession of some truth that’s denied to me.

      ANNA: I’ve always got to be the enemy. You’ve got to have an enemy …

      DAVE: You’re right. I’ve got to have an enemy. Why not? I’m not going to love my brother as myself if he’s not worth it. Nor my sister, if it comes to that – where was I?

      ANNA: Kinda liking people.

      DAVE: There was a sort of thoughtful pause. I waited, biting my nails. Then he said, or drawled. ‘Tell me, just at random now, is there any thing or event or happening that has seemed to you significant. Just to give us something to get our teeth into, Mr Miller?’ Well, doc, I said, just at random, and picking a significant moment from a life full of significant moments, and on principle at that – latch on to that doc, it’s important in our case, that my life has been uninterruptedly full of significant moments … but has yours doc? I want to know? We should talk as equals doc, has your life been as full as mine of significant moments?

      ANNA: Dave, stop boasting.

      DAVE: Hell, Anna. If you love me, it’s because I lived that way, Well? And so. But to pull just one little cat or kitten out of the bag, doc, I would say it was the moment I woke beside a waitress in Minnesota, and she said to me in her sweet measured voice: ‘Honey you’re nuts. Did you know that?’ … Well, to tell the truth, no, I hadn’t known it. Light flooded in on me. I’ve been living with it ever since. And so. I was all fixed up to see one of your opposite numbers in the States, my great country, that was in LA, California, where I happened to be at the time, writing scripts for our film industry. Then I heard he was a stool pigeon for the FBI. No, don’t look like that doc, don’t – very distasteful, I’ll admit, but the world’s a rough place. Half his patients were int-ell-ectuals, and Reds and Pinks, since intellectuals so often tend to be, and after every couch session, he was moseying off to the FBI with information. Now, doc, here’s an American and essentially socially-minded, I want an answer, in this great country, England, I can come to you with perfect confidence that you won’t go trotting off to the MI5, to inform them that during my communist period I was a communist. That is, before I was expelled from that institution for hinting that Stalin had his weak moments. I tend to shoot off my mouth, doc. A weakness, I know, but I know that you won’t, and that gives me a profound feeling of security.

      ANNA: Dave, you’re nuts.

      DAVE: So said the waitress in Minnesota. Say it often enough and I’ll believe it.

      ANNA: So what did Dr Cooper-Anstey say?

      DAVE: He lightly, oh so lightly, touched his fingertips together, and he drawled: ‘Tell me Mr Miller, how many women have you had?’

      [ANNA laughs.]

      DAVE: Hey doc, I said, I was talking seriously. I was talking about the comparative states of liberty in my country and in yours. He said: ‘Mr Miller, don’t evade my question.’

      [ANNA laughs.]

      DAVE: OK doc, if you’re going to be a small-minded … but let’s leave the statistics, doc. I’m pretty well schooled in this psycho-analysis bit, I said, all my fine stable well integrated friends have been through your mill. And so I know that if I pulled out a notebook full of statistics, you’d think I was pretty sick – you may think it careless of me, doc, but I don’t know how many women I’ve had. But Mr Miller, he drawled, you must have some idea? Well, at this point I see that this particular morale-builder is not for me. Tell me, Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, I said, how many women have you had?

      [ANNA rolls, laughing.]

      DAVE: Hey, Anna, this is serious girl. A serious matter … hey, ho, he was mad, was Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey sore. He sat himself up to his full height, and he told me in tones of severe displeasure, that I was an adolescent. Yeah, doc, I said, we Americans are all children, we’re all adolescent, we know that. But I wanted to know – how many women have you had doc? Because we have to talk man to man, doc, adolescent or not. There’s got to be some sort of equality around this place, I said. After all, I said, one woman is not like another doc, believe me, if you’ve slept with one woman you’ve not slept with them all and don’t you think it. And besides, doc, I said, you’re an Englishman. That is not without relevance. Because, judging from my researches into this field, Englishmen don’t like women very much. So English women complain. So they murmur in the dark night watches with their arms gratefully around the stranger’s neck. Now I like women doc, I like them. The point is, do you? He laughed. Like this [DAVE gives a high whinnying laugh] But I persisted. I said, doc, do you like your wife? And what is more important, does she like you? Does she, doc? And so.

      ANNA: And so?

      DAVE: And so he kicked me out, with all the dignity an upperclass Englishman brings to such matters. In tones frozen with good taste, he said, ‘Mr Miller, you know how to find your own way out, I think.’

      ANNA: It’s all very well.

      DAVE: [mimicking her] It’s all very well, don’t freeze up on me Anna, I won’t have it. [a pause] Anna, he did vouchsafe me with two little bits of information from the heights of integration. One. He said I couldn’t go on like this. I said, that’s right, that’s why I’ve come to you. And two. He said I should get married, have two well-spaced children and a settled job. Ah, doc, now you’re at the hub of the thing. What job, I said? Because I’ll let you into a secret. What’s wrong with all of us is not that our mummies and daddies weren’t nice to us it’s that we don’t believe the work we do is important. Oh, I know I’m earnest, doc, I’m pompous and earnest – but I need work that makes me feel I’m contributing. So doc, give – I’m a man of a hundred talents, none of them outstanding. But I have one thing, doc, just one important thing – if I spend eight hours СКАЧАТЬ