Play With a Tiger and Other Plays. Doris Lessing
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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 on the lights, fast. Goes to her.]
DAVE [gently]: Perhaps the irony was the truth.
ANNA: No, no, no. It was not.
DAVE [laughing at her, but gently]: You’re a romantic, Anna Freeman. You’re an adolescent.
ANNA: Yes, I’m an adolescent. And that’s how I’m going to stay. Anything, anything rather than the man and woman, the jailed and the jailer, living together, talking to themselves, and wondering what happened that made them strangers. I won’t, I’ll die alone first. And I shall. I shall.
DAVE [holding her]: Hey, Anna, Anna. [gently laughing] You know what Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey would say to that?
ANNA: Yes.
DAVE: And what all the welfare workers would say?
ANNA: Yes.
DAVE: And what all the priests would say?
ANNA: Yes.
DAVE: And what the politicians would say?
ANNA: Yes. [she tears herself from him] Don’t rock the boat.
DAVE: [taking her up]: Don’t rock the boat. [he switches off the lights]
[They look at each other, beginning to laugh. The following sequence, while they throw slogans, or newspaper headlines at each other should be played with enjoyment, on the move, trying to out-cap each other.]
ANNA: Don’t rock the boat – work.
DAVE: Produce goods and children for the State.
ANNA: Marry young.
DAVE: The unit of society is a stable marriage.
ANNA: The unit of a healthy society is a well-integrated family.
DAVE: Earn money.
ANNA: Remember the first and worst sin is poverty.
DAVE: The first and best virtue is to own a comfortable home full of labour-saving devices.
ANNA: If you have too much leisure, there are football matches, the pools and television.
DAVE: If you still have too much leisure be careful not to spend it in ways that might rock the boat.
ANNA: Don’t rock the boat – society might have its minor imperfections, but they are nothing very serious.
DAVE: Don’t dream of anything better – dreams are by definition neurotic.
ANNA: If you are dissatisfied with society, you are by definition unstable.
DAVE: If your soul doesn’t fit into the patterns laid down for you –
ANNA: Kill yourself, but don’t rock the boat.
DAVE: Be integrated.
ANNA: Be stable.
DAVE: Be secure.
ANNA: Be integrated or –
| DAVE: |
 |
Die! Die! Die! |
| ANNA: |
DAVE: The trouble with you, Anna, is that you exaggerate everything.
ANNA: The trouble with you Dave, is that you have no sense of proportion.
DAVE: Proportion. I have no sense of proportion. I must scale myself down … I have spent my whole life on the move … I’ve spent my youth on the move across the continent and back again – from New York to Pittsburgh, from Pittsburgh to Chicago, from Chicago … [by now he is almost dancing his remembering] … across the great plains of the Middle West to Salt Lake City and the Rocky Mountains, and down to the sea again at San Francisco. Then back again, again, again, from West to East, from North to South, from Dakota to Mexico and back again … and sometimes, just sometimes, when I’ve driven twelve hours at a stretch with the road rolling up behind me like a carpet, sometimes I’ve reached it, sometimes I’ve reached what I’m needing – my head rests on the Golden Gates, with one hand I touch Phoenix, Arizona, and with the other I hold Minneapolis, and my feet straddle from Maine to the Florida Keys. And under me America rocks, America rocks – like a woman.
ANNA: Or like the waitress from Minnesota.
DAVE: Ah, Jesus!
ANNA: You are maladjusted Mr Miller!
DAVE: But you aren’t, do tell me how you do it!
ANNA: Now when I can’t breathe any more I shut my eyes and I walk out into the sun – I stand on a ridge of high country and look out over leagues and leagues of – emptiness. Then I bend down and pick up a handful of red dust, a handful of red dust and I smell it. It smells of sunlight.
DAVE: Of sunlight.
ANNA: I tell you, if I lived in this bloody mildewed little country for seven times seven years, my flesh would be sunlight. From here to here, sunlight.
DAVE: You’re neurotic, Anna, you’ve got to face up to it.
ANNA: But you’re all right, you’re going to settle in a split-level house with a stable wife and two children.
DAVE [pulling ANNA to