Play With a Tiger and Other Plays. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ [mocking]: But I come from a stable home.

      DAVE: Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey said to me: ‘Mr Miller, your trouble is, you come from a broken home.’ But doc, I said, my home wasn’t broken – my parents were both union organizers. He winced. A look of distaste settled around his long sensitive nose. He fought for the right comment. At last it came: ‘Really?’ he said. Yeah, really, I said. My parents were professional union organisers.

      ANNA [being DR MELVILLE COOPER-ANSTEY]: Union organizers, Mr Miller?

      DAVE: That’s right, doc, it’s true that my childhood was spent hither and thither as you might say, but it was in a good cause. My mother was usually organizing a picket line in Detroit while my father was organizing a strike in Pittsburgh.

      ANNA: Really, Mr Miller.

      DAVE: But doc, it was the late ’twenties and early ’thirties – people were hungry, they were out of work.

      ANNA: You must stick to the point Mr Miller.

      DAVE: But if I spent my time hither and thither it was not because my parents quarrelled. They loved each other.

      ANNA: Were you, or were you not, a disturbed child, Mr Miller?

      DAVE: The truth compels me to state, I was a disturbed child. But in a good cause. My parents thought the state of the world was more important than me, and they were right, I am on their side. But I never really saw either of them. We scarcely met. So my mother was whichever lady welfare worker that happened to be dealing with the local delinquents at the time, and my father was the anarchists, the Jewish socialist youth, the communists and the Trotskyists. In a word, the radical tradition – oh, don’t laugh doc. I don’t expect they’ll have taught you about the radical tradition in Oxford, England, but it stood for something. And it will again – it stood for the great dream – that life can be noble and beautiful and dignified.

      ANNA: And what did he say?

      DAVE: He said I was an adolescent. Doc, I said, my childhood was disturbed – by the great dream – and if yours was not, perhaps after all you had the worst of it.

      ANNA: You are evading the issue, Mr Miller.

      DAVE: But you’re all right, you have stability – Anna, you didn’t come from a broken home.

      ANNA: No, I come from a well-integrated, typical stable marriage.

      DAVE: Then tell me Anna, tell me about stable and well-integrated marriage.

      ANNA [standing up and remembering. She shudders]: My mother wanted to be a great pianist. Oh she was not without talent. She played at a concert in Brisbane once – that was the high point of her life. That night she met my father. They married. She never opened the piano after I was born. My father never earned as much money as he thought life owed him – for some reason, the second-hand cars had a spite on him. My mother got more and more garrulous. In a word, she was a nag. My father got more and more silent. But he used to confide in me. He used to tell me what his dreams had been when he was a young man. Oh yes, he was a world-changer too, before he married.

      DAVE: All young men are world-changers, before they marry.

      ANNA: OK. It’s not my fault …

      [They look at each other. DAVE leaps up, switches out the light. DAVE stands across from ANNA, in a hunched, defeated pose. ANNA has her hands on her hips, a scold.]

      ANNA: Yes, Mr MacClure, you said that last month – but how am I going to pay the bill from the store, tell me that?

      DAVE [in Australian]: A man came in today, he said he might buy that Ford.

      ANNA: Might buy! Might buy! And I promised Anna a new coat, I promised her, this month, a new coat.

      DAVE: Then Anna can do without, it won’t hurt her.

      ANNA: That’s just like you – you always say next month, next month things will be better – and how about the boy, how can we pay his fees, we promised him this year …

      DAVE: Ah, shut up. [shouting] Shut up. I said. Shut up …

      [He turns away, hunched up.]

      ANNA [speaking aloud the monologue of her mother’s thoughts]: Yes, that’s how I spend my life, pinching and saving – all day, cooking and preserving, and making clothes for the kids, that’s all I ever do, I never even get a holiday. And it’s for a man who doesn’t even know I’m here – well, if he had to do without me, he’d know what I’ve done for him. He’d value me if he had to do without me – if I left him, he’d know, soon enough. There’s Mr Jones from the store; he’s a soft spot for me, trying to kiss me when there’s no one there but us two, yes, I’d just have to lift my finger and Mr Jones would take me away – I didn’t lack for men before I married – they came running when I smiled. Ah God in heaven, if I hadn’t married this good-for-nothing here, I’d be a great pianist, I’d know all the golden cities of the world -Paris, Rome, London, I’d know the great world, and here I am, stuck in a dump like this, with two ungrateful kids and a no-good husband …

      DAVE [speaking aloud MR MACCLURE’S thoughts]: Well what the hell does she want – I wouldn’t be here in this dump at all if it wasn’t for her; does she think that’s all I’m fit for, selling old cars, to keep food and clothes in the home? Why, if I hadn’t married her, I’d be free to go where I liked – she sees me as a convenience to get money to keep her and her kids, that’s all she cares about, the kids, she doesn’t care for me. Without her I’d be off across the world – the world’s a big place I’d be free to do what I liked – and the women, yes, the women, why, she doesn’t regard me, but only last week, Mrs Jones was giving me the glad eye from behind the counter when her old man wasn’t looking – yes, she’d better watch out, she’d miss me right enough if I left her …

      ANNA [as ANNA]: A typical well-integrated marriage. [as her MOTHER]: Mr MacClure, are you listening to me?

      DAVE [as MR MACCLURE]: Yes, dear.

      ANNA [going to him, wistful]: You’re not sorry you married me?

      DAVE: No dear, I’m not sorry I married you.

      [They smile at each other, ironical.]

      ANNA [as ANNA]: The highest emotion they ever knew was a kind of ironical compassion – the compassion of one prisoner for another … [as her MOTHER] There’s the children, dear. They are both fine kids, both of them.

      DAVE: Yes, dear, they’re both fine kids. [patting her] There, there dear, it’s all right, don’t worry dear.

      ANNA [as ANNA]: That’s how it was. And when I was nine years old I looked at that good fine stable marriage and at the marriages of our friends and neighbours and I swore, to the God I already did not believe in, God, I said, God, if I go down in loneliness and misery, if I die alone somewhere in a furnished room in a lonely city that doesn’t know me – I’ll do that sooner than marry as my father and mother were married. I’ll have the truth with the man I’m with or I’ll have nothing. [shuddering] Nothing.

      DAVE: Hey – Anna!

      [He switches СКАЧАТЬ