Play With a Tiger and Other Plays

[ANNA rolls, laughing.]

DAVE: Hey, Anna, this is serious girl. A serious matter … hey, ho, he was mad, was Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey sore. He sat himself up to his full height, and he told me in tones of severe displeasure, that I was an adolescent. Yeah, doc, I said, we Americans are all children, we’re all adolescent, we know that. But I wanted to know – how many women have you had doc? Because we have to talk man to man, doc, adolescent or not. There’s got to be some sort of equality around this place, I said. After all, I said, one woman is not like another doc, believe me, if you’ve slept with one woman you’ve not slept with them all and don’t you think it. And besides, doc, I said, you’re an Englishman. That is not without relevance. Because, judging from my researches into this field, Englishmen don’t like women very much. So English women complain. So they murmur in the dark night watches with their arms gratefully around the stranger’s neck. Now I like women doc, I like them. The point is, do you? He laughed. Like this [DAVE gives a high whinnying laugh] But I persisted. I said, doc, do you like your wife? And what is more important, does she like you? Does she, doc? And so.

ANNA: And so?

DAVE: And so he kicked me out, with all the dignity an upperclass Englishman brings to such matters. In tones frozen with good taste, he said, ‘Mr Miller, you know how to find your own way out, I think.’

ANNA: It’s all very well.

DAVE: [mimicking her] It’s all very well, don’t freeze up on me Anna, I won’t have it. [a pause] Anna, he did vouchsafe me with two little bits of information from the heights of integration. One. He said I couldn’t go on like this. I said, that’s right, that’s why I’ve come to you. And two. He said I should get married, have two well-spaced children and a settled job. Ah, doc, now you’re at the hub of the thing. What job, I said? Because I’ll let you into a secret. What’s wrong with all of us is not that our mummies and daddies weren’t nice to us it’s that we don’t believe the work we do is important. Oh, I know I’m earnest, doc, I’m pompous and earnest – but I need work that makes me feel I’m contributing. So doc, give – I’m a man of a hundred talents, none of them outstanding. But I have one thing, doc, just one important thing – if I spend eight hours a day working, I need to know that men, women and children are benefiting by my work. So … What job shall I do. Tell me.

ANNA: So?

DAVE: He said I should get any job that would enable me to keep a wife and two children, and in this way I would be integrated into society. [he flings himself down on the carpet] Anna, for God’s sake, Anna.

ANNA: Don’t ask me.

DAVE: Why not? I can’t ask Dr Anstey. Because the significant moment I keep coming back to he wouldn’t see at all. It wasn’t the moment I decided to leave America. I drove right across the States, looking up all my friends, the kids who’d been world-challengers with me. They were all married. Some of them were divorced, of course, but that’s merely an incident in the process of being married. They all had houses, cars, jobs, families. They were not pleased to see me – they knew I was still unintegrated. I asked each one a simple question. Hey, man, I said, this great country of ours, it’s in no too healthy a state. What are we going to do about it? And do you know what they said?

ANNA: Don’t rock the boat.

DAVE: You’ve got it in one, kid. But I had one ace up my sleeve. There was my old buddy, Jedd. He’ll still be right in there, fighting. So I walked into his apartment where he was sitting with his brand new second wife. There was a nervous silence. Then he said: Are you successful yet, Dave? And so I took the first boat over.

ANNA: And the wife and the two well-spaced kids?

DAVE: You know I can’t get married. You know that if I could I’d marry you. And perhaps I should marry you. How about it?

ANNA: No. The wedding would be the last I’d see of you – you’d be off across the world like a dog with a fire-cracker tied to its tail.

DAVE: I know. So I can’t get married. [a pause] Why don’t you just trap me into it? Perhaps I need simply to be tied down?

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Why not?

ANNA: Any man I have stays with me, voluntarily, because he wants to, without ties.

DAVE: Your bloody pride is more important to you than what I need.

ANNA: Don’t beat me up.

DAVE: I will if I want. You’re my woman so if I feel like beating you up I will. And you can fight back … Anna what are you being enigmatic about? All the time, there’s something in the air, that’s not being said. What is it?

ANNA: Not being said, I keep trying. Don’t you really know.

DAVE [in a panic]: No. What?

ANNA: If I told you, you’d say I was just imagining it. All right, I’ll try again, Janet Stevens.

DAVE [furious]: You’re a monomaniac. Janet Stevens. Do you imagine that a nice little middle-class girl, whose poppa’s sort of sub-manager for an insurance company, do you imagine she can mean anything to me?

ANNA: Oh my God, Dave.

DAVE: You’re crazy. It’s you that’s crazy.

ANNA: Dave, while you’re banging and crashing about the world, playing this role and that role, filling your life full of significant moments – there are other people in the world … hell, what’s the use of talking to you. [a pause] As a matter of interest, and this is a purely abstract question, suppose you married Janet Stevens, what would you have to do?

DAVE: Anna, are you crazy? Can you see me? God help me, I’m a member of that ever-increasing and honourable company, the world’s ex-patriates. Like you, Anna.

ANNA: Oh, all right.

DAVE: How the hell could I marry her? She wouldn’t under-stand a word I ever said, for a start.

ANNA: Oh all right.

DAVE: ‘There’s no point at all in discussing it.’

ANNA: None at all.

DAVE: I said to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey: This society you want me to be integrated with, do you approve of it? If you don’t, what are you doing, sitting there with those big black scissors cutting people into shapes to fit it? Well, doc, I’ll tell you something, I don’t approve of society, it stinks. I don’t want to fit into it, I want society to fit itself to me – I’ll make a deal with you, doc, I’ll come and lie on this comfortable couch of yours, Tuesdays and Fridays from 2 to 3 for seven years, on condition that at the end of that time society is a place fit for Dave Miller to live in. How’s that for a proposition doc? Because of course that means you’ll have to join the Dave Miller fraternity for changing the world. You join my organization and I’ll join yours. [he turns on ANNA] Hey, Anna, don’t just lie there, reserving judgment.

ANNA: I didn’t say a word.

DAVE: You never have to. You’re like Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey – you put your spiritual fingertips together and purse your lips.

ANNA [furious]: Dave do you know something – when you need an enemy, you turn me into a kind of – lady welfare worker. Who was the great enemy of your childhood? The lady welfare worker. [jumping up – in Australian] I’m Anna MacClure the daughter of a second-hand car dealer. My grand-father was a horse-doctor. My great-grand-father was a stock farmer. And my great-great-grand-father was a convict, shipped from this our mother country God bless her to populate the outback. I’m the great-great-grand-daughter of a convict, I’m the aristocracy so don’t get at me, Dave Miller, corner-boy, street-gang-leader – I’m as good as you are, any day. [he pulls her down on to the carpet, she pushes his hands away] No. I told you, no.

DAVE [swinging her round to sit by him. His arms round her]: OK then baby, we don’t have to make love. Like hell we don’t. OK sit quiet and hold my hand. Do you love me, Anna?

ANNA: Love you? You are me. [mocking] You are the flame, the promise and the enchantment. You are for me – what Janet Stevens is for you. [she laughs] Imagine it Dave Miller, for you the flame is embodied in a succession of well-conducted young ladies, each one more banal than the last. For me – it’s you. [suddenly serious] You are my soul.

DAVE [holding her down beside him]: If I’m your soul, then surely it’s in order to sit beside me?

[They sit, arms round each other, ANNA’S head on his shoulder.]

ANNA: I only breathe freely when I’m with you.

DAVE [complacent]: I know.

ANNA [furious]: What do you mean? I was on the point of getting married.

DAVE: Don’t be absurd.

ANNA: What’s going to become of us?

DAVE: Perhaps I shall go back to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey – like hell.

ANNA: It’s not fair to take it out of Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey just because he isn’t God.

DAVE: Of course it’s fair. If God wasn’t dead I wouldn’t be going to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey. Perhaps I should wrestle with him – after all, these people have what’s the word? Stability.

ANNA: Stability. Security. Safety.

DAVE: You were born with one skin more than I have.

ANNA [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 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 the front of the stage and pointing over and down into the house]: Poke that little nose of yours over your safe white cliffs and look down – see all those strange coloured fish down there – not cod, and halibut and Dover sole and good British herring, but the poisonous coloured fish of Paradise.

ANNA: Cod. Halibut. Dover Sole. Good British herring.

DAVE: Ah, Jesus, you’ve got the soul of a little housewife from Brixton.

ANNA [leaping up and switching on the lights]: Or from Philadelphia. Well let me tell you Dave Miller, any little housewife from Brixton or Philadelphia could tell you what’s wrong with you.

DAVE [mocking]: Tell me baby.

ANNA: You are America, the America you’ve sold your soul to – do you know what she is?

DAVE [mocking]: No baby, tell me what she is.

ANNA: She’s that terrible woman in your comic papers – a great masculine broad-shouldered narrow-hipped black-booted blonde beastess, with a whip in one hand and a revolver in the other. And that’s why you’re running, she’s after you, Dave Miller, as she’s after every male American I’ve ever met. I bet you even see the Statue of Liberty with great black thigh-boots and a pencilled moustache – the frigid tyrant, the frigid goddess.

DAVE [mocking]: But she’s never frigid for me, baby. [he does his little mocking dance]

ANNA: God’s gift to women, Dave Miller.

DAVE: That’s right, that’s right baby.

ANNA: And have you ever thought what happens to them – the waitress in Minnesota, the farmer’s wife in Nebraska, the club-hostess in Detroit? Dave Miller descends for one night, a gift from God, and leaves the next day. ‘Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,’ she cries, ‘stay with me baby.’ ‘I can’t baby, my destiny waits’ – your destiny being the waitress in the next drive-in café. [she is now dancing around him] And why don’t you stay, or don’t you know? It’s because you’re scared. Because if you stay, she might turn into the jackbooted whip-handling tyrant.

DAVE: No. I’m not going to take the responsibility for you. That’s what you want, like every woman I’ve ever known. That I should say, I love you baby and …

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you, honey.

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you, doll.

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you – but that’s the signal for you to curl up and resign your soul to me. You want me to be responsible for you.

ANNA: You’ll never be responsible for anyone. [flat] One day you’ll learn that when you say I love you baby it means something.

DAVE: Well, everything’s running true to form – I haven’t been back a couple of hours but the knives are out and the tom-toms beating for the sex-war.

ANNA: It’s the only clean war left. It’s the only war that won’t destroy us all. That’s why we are fighting it.

DAVE: Sometimes I think you really hate me, Anna.

ANNA [mocking]: Really? Sometimes I think I’ve never hated anyone so much in all my life. A good clean emotion hate is. I hate you.