Play With a Tiger and Other Plays. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ Uh-huh.

      ANNA: However, comforting myself with my usual sociological-type thought, I don’t see how there can be such pain everywhere without something new growing out of it.

      DAVE: Uh-huh.

      ANNA [fierce]: Yes!

      DAVE: All the same, you’re tough. At a conservative estimate, a hundred times tougher than I am. Why?

      ANNA [mocking]: Obviously, I’m a woman, everyone knows we are tough.

      DAVE: Uh-huh … I was thinking, when I was away from you, every time I take a beating it gets harder to stand up after-wards. You take punishment and up you get smiling.

      ANNA: Oh quite so. Lucky, isn’t it?

      DAVE: Tell me, when your husband was killed, did it knock you down?

      ANNA: Oh of course not, why should it?

      DAVE: OK Anna.

      ANNA: Everyone knows that when a marriage ends because the husband is killed fighting heroically for his country the marriage is by definition romantic and beautiful. [at his look] All right, I don’t choose to remember. [at his look] OK, it was a long time ago.

      DAVE: Well then, is it because you’ve got that kid?

      ANNA [irritated]: Is what because I’ve got that kid. That kid, that kid … You talk about him as if he were a plant in a pot on the windowsill, or a parcel I’ve left lying about somewhere, instead of what my life has been about.

      DAVE: Why take men seriously when you’ve got a child?

      ANNA [ironic]: Ho-ho, I see.

      DAVE: All right then, tell me truthfully, tell me straight, baby, none of the propaganda now, what does it really mean to you to have that kid?

      ANNA: But why should you be interested, you’re not going to have children …

      DAVE: Come on, Anna, you can’t have it both ways.

      ANNA: No.

      DAVE: Why not?

      ANNA [angry]: Because I can never say anything I think, I feel – it always ends up with what you think, you feel. My God, Dave, sometimes I feel you like a great black shadow over me I’ve got to get away from … oh all right, all right … [She stands, slowly smiles.]

      DAVE: Don’t give me that Mona Lisa stuff, I want to know.

      ANNA: Well. He sets me free. Yes, that’s it, he sets me free.

      DAVE: Why, for God’s sake, you spend your time in savage domesticity whenever he’s within twenty miles of you.

      ANNA: Don’t you see? He’s there. I go into his room when he’s asleep to take a good long look at him, because he’s too old now to look at when he’s awake, that’s already an interference. So I look at him. He’s there.

      DAVE: He’s there.

      ANNA: There he is. He’s something new. A kind of ray of light that shoots off into any direction. Or blazes up like a comet or goes off like a rocket.

      DAVE [angry]: Oh don’t tell me, you mean it gives you a sense of power – you look at him and you think – I made that.

      ANNA: No, that’s not it. Well, that’s what I said would happen. You asked, I told you, and you don’t believe me.

      [She turns her back on him, goes to window. A long wolf-whistle from outside. Another.]

      ANNA: Let’s ask him up and tell him the facts of life.

      DAVE: Not much point if he hasn’t got fifty shillings.

      ANNA: The State is prosperous. He will have fifty shillings.

      DAVE: No, let us preserve romance. Let him dream.

      [Shouting and quarrelling from the street.]

      DAVE [at window with her]: There’s the police.

      ANNA: They’re picking up the star-struck hero as well.

      DAVE: No mixing of the sexes at the police station so he can go on dreaming of his loved-one from afar even now.

      [A noise of something falling on the stairs. Voices. Giggling.]

      DAVE: What the hell’s that?

      ANNA: It’s Mary.

      DAVE: She’s got herself a man? Good for her.

      ANNA [distressed and irritable]: No, but she’s going to get herself laid. Well that’s OK with you isn’t it? Nothing wrong with getting oneself laid, according to you.

      DAVE: It might be the beginning of something serious for her.

      ANNA: Oh quite so. And when you get yourself laid. [conversationally and with malice] It’s odd the way the American male talks of getting himself laid. In the passive. ‘I went out and got myself laid’ what a picture – the poor helpless creature, pursuing his own pure concerns, while the predatory female creeps up behind him and lays him on his back …

      DAVE: Don’t get at me because you’re worried about Mary.

      [He goes over and puts his ann about her. For a moment, she accepts it.] Who is it?

      ANNA: Harry. [MARY and HARRY have arrived outside ANNA’S door. Can be seen as two shadows. One shadow goes upstairs. One shadow remains.] I hope she doesn’t come in.

      DAVE: But he shouldn’t be here if Helen’s in a bad way … [as ANNA looks at him] Hell. [He goes across to the mirror, where he stands grimacing at himself.]

      [MARY knocks and comes in. She is rather drunk and aggressive.]

      MARY: You’re up late aren’t you?

      ANNA: Have a good time?

      MARY: He’s quite amusing, Harry. [She affects a yawn.] I’m dead. Well, I think I’ll pop off to bed. [looking suspiciously at ANNA] You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?

      ANNA [looking across at DAVE]: No.

      [MARY sees DAVE, who is draping the black cloth across the mirror.]

      MARY: Well, what a stranger. What are you doing? Don’t you like the look of yourself?

      DAVE: Not very much. Do you?

      MARY: I’ve been talking over old times with Harry.

      DAVE: Yes, Anna said.

      MARY: I expect you two have been talking over old times too. I must go to bed, I’m dead on my feet. [There СКАЧАТЬ