Complete Works, Volume IV. Harold Pinter
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Название: Complete Works, Volume IV
Автор: Harold Pinter
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежная драматургия
Серия: Pinter, Harold
isbn: 9780802192264
isbn:
We’ve talked before. In that pub, for example. In the corner. Luke didn’t like it much but we ignored him. Later we all went to a party. Someone’s flat, somewhere in Westbourne Grove. You sat on a very low sofa, I sat opposite and looked up your skirt. Your black stockings were very black because your thighs were so white. That’s something that’s all over now, of course, isn’t it, nothing like the same palpable profit in it now, it’s all over. But it was worthwhile then. It was worthwhile that night. I simply sat sipping my light ale and gazed . . . gazed up your skirt. You didn’t object, you found my gaze perfectly acceptable.
ANNA I was aware of your gaze, was I?
DEELEY There was a great argument going on, about China or something, or death, or China and death, I can’t remember which, but nobody but I had a thigh-kissing view, nobody but you had the thighs which kissed. And here you are. Same woman. Same thighs.
Pause
Yes. Then a friend of yours came in, a girl, a girl friend. She sat on the sofa with you, you both chatted and chuckled, sitting together, and I settled lower to gaze at you both, at both your thighs, squealing and hissing, you aware, she unaware, but then a great multitude of men surrounded me, and demanded my opinion about death, or about China, or whatever it was, and they would not let me be but bent down over me, so that what with their stinking breath and their broken teeth and the hair in their noses and China and death and their arses on the arms of my chair I was forced to get up and plunge my way through them, followed by them with ferocity, as if I were the cause of their argument, looking back through smoke, rushing to the table with the linoleum cover to look for one more full bottle of light ale, looking back through smoke, glimpsing two girls on the sofa, one of them you, heads close, whispering, no longer able to see anything, no longer able to see stocking or thigh, and then you were gone. I wandered over to the sofa. There was no one on it. I gazed at the indentations of four buttocks. Two of which were yours.
Pause
ANNA I’ve rarely heard a sadder story.
DEELEY I agree.
ANNA I’m terribly sorry.
DEELEY That’s all right.
Pause
I never saw you again. You disappeared from the area. Perhaps you moved out.
ANNA No. I didn’t.
DEELEY I never saw you in The Wayfarers Tavern again. Where were you?
ANNA Oh, at concerts, I should think, or the ballet.
Silence
Katey’s taking a long time over her bath.
DEELEY Well, you know what she’s like when she gets in the bath.
ANNA Yes.
DEELEY Enjoys it. Takes a long time over it.
ANNA She does, yes.
DEELEY A hell of a long time. Luxuriates in it. Gives herself a great soaping all over.
Pause
Really soaps herself all over, and then washes the soap off, sud by sud. Meticulously. She’s both thorough and, I must say it, sensuous. Gives herself a comprehensive going over, and apart from everything else she does emerge as clean as a new pin. Don’t you think?
ANNA Very clean.
DEELEY Truly so. Not a speck. Not a tidemark. Shiny as a balloon.
ANNA Yes, a kind of floating.
DEELEY What?
ANNA She floats from the bath. Like a dream. Unaware of anyone standing, with her towel, waiting for her, waiting to wrap it round her. Quite absorbed.
Pause
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