Complete Works, Volume IV. Harold Pinter
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They don’t make them like that any more.
Silence
What happened to me was this. I popped into a fleapit to see Odd Man Out. Some bloody awful summer afternoon, walking in no direction. I remember thinking there was something familiar about the neighbourhood and suddenly recalled that it was in this very neighbourhood that my father bought me my first tricycle, the only tricycle in fact I ever possessed. Anyway, there was the bicycle shop and there was this fleapit showing Odd Man Out and there were two usherettes standing in the foyer and one of them was stroking her breasts and the other one was saying ‘dirty bitch’ and the one stroking her breasts was saying ‘mmnnn’ with a very sensual relish and smiling at her fellow usherette, so I marched in on this excruciatingly hot summer afternoon in the middle of nowhere and watched Odd Man Out and thought Robert Newton was fantastic. And I still think he was fantastic. And I would commit murder for him, even now. And there was only one other person in the cinema, one other person in the whole of the whole cinema, and there she is. And there she was, very dim, very still, placed more or less I would say at the dead centre of the auditorium. I was off centre and have remained so. And I left when the film was over, noticing, even though James Mason was dead, that the first usherette appeared to be utterly exhausted, and I stood for a moment in the sun, thinking I suppose about something and then this girl came out and I think looked about her and I said wasn’t Robert Newton fantastic, and she said something or other, Christ knows what, but looked at me, and I thought Jesus this is it, I’ve made a catch, this is a trueblue pickup, and when we had sat down in the café with tea she looked into her cup and then up at me and told me she thought Robert Newton was remarkable. So it was Robert Newton who brought us together and it is only Robert Newton who can tear us apart.
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ANNA F. J. McCormick was good too.
DEELEY I know F. J. McCormick was good too. But he didn’t bring us together.
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DEELEY You’ve seen the film then?
ANNA Yes.
DEELEY When?
ANNA Oh . . . long ago.
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DEELEY (To Kate.) Remember that film?
KATE Oh yes. Very well.
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DEELEY I think I am right in saying the next time we met we held hands. I held her cool hand, as she walked by me, and I said something which made her smile, and she looked at me, didn’t you, flicking her hair back, and I thought she was even more fantastic than Robert Newton.
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And then at a slightly later stage our naked bodies met, hers cool, warm, highly agreeable, and I wondered what Robert Newton would think of this. What would he think of this I wondered as I touched her profoundly all over. (To Anna.) What do you think he’d think?
ANNA I never met Robert Newton but I do know I know what you mean. There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place.
DEELEY What?
ANNA This man crying in our room. One night late I returned and found him sobbing, his hand over his face, sitting in the armchair, all crumpled in the armchair and Katey sitting on the bed with a mug of coffee and no one spoke to me, no one spoke, no one looked up. There was nothing I could do. I undressed and switched out the light and got into my bed, the curtains were thin, the light from the street came in, Katey still, on her bed, the man sobbed, the light came in, it flicked the wall, there was a slight breeze, the curtains occasionally shook, there was nothing but sobbing, suddenly it stopped. The man came over to me, quickly, looked down at me, but I would have absolutely nothing to do with him, nothing.
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No, no, I’m quite wrong . . . he didn’t move quickly . . . That’s quite wrong . . . he moved . . . very slowly, the light was bad, and stopped. He stood in the centre of the room. He looked at us both, at our beds. Then he turned towards me. He approached my bed. He bent down over me. But I would have nothing to do with him, absolutely nothing.
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DEELEY What kind of man was he?
ANNA But after a while I heard him go out. I heard the front door close, and footsteps in the street, then silence, then the footsteps fade away, and then silence.
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But then sometime later in the night I woke up and looked across the room to her bed and saw two shapes.
DEELEY He’d come back!
ANNA He was lying across her lap on her bed.
DEELEY A man in the dark across my wife’s lap?
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ANNA But then in the early morning . . . he had gone.
DEELEY Thank Christ for that.
ANNA It was as if he had never been.
DEELEY Of course he’d been. He went twice and came once.
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Well, what an exciting story that was.
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What did he look like, this fellow?
ANNA Oh, I never saw his face clearly. I don’t know.
DEELEY But was he—?
Kate stands. She goes to a small table, takes a cigarette from a box and lights it. She looks down at Anna.
KATE You talk of me as if I were dead.
ANNA No, no, you weren’t dead, you were so lively, so animated, you used to laugh—
DEELEY Of course you did. I made you smile myself, didn’t I? walking along the street, holding hands. You smiled fit to bust.
ANNA Yes, she could be so . . . animated.
DEELEY Animated is no word for it. When she smiled . . . how can I describe it?
ANNA Her eyes lit up.
DEELEY I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Deeley stands, goes to cigarette box, picks it up, smiles at Kate. Kate looks at him, watches him light a cigarette, takes the box from him, crosses to Anna, offers her a cigarette. Anna takes one.
ANNA You weren’t dead. Ever. In any way.
KATE I said you talk about me as if I am dead. Now.
ANNA How can you say that? How can you say that, when I’m looking at you now, seeing you so shyly poised over me, looking down at me—
DEELEY Stop that!
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Kate sits.
Deeley pours a drink.
DEELEY Myself I was a student then, juggling with my future, wondering should I bejasus saddle myself with a slip of a girl not long out of her swaddling clothes whose only claim to virtue was silence but who lacked any sense of fixedness, any sense of decisiveness, but was compliant only to the shifting winds, with which she went, but not the winds, and certainly not my winds, such as they are, but I suppose winds that only she understood, and that of course with no understanding whatsoever, at least as I understand the word, at least that’s the way I figured it. A classic female figure, I said to myself, or is it a classic female posture, one way or the other long outworn.
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That’s the position as I saw it then. I mean, that is my categorical pronouncement on the position as I saw it then. Twenty years ago.
Silence
ANNA When I heard that Katey was married my heart leapt with joy.
DEELEY How did the news