The Traveling Companion & Other Plays

by Tennessee Williams

  MISS YORKE: Miss McBride? [She receives no answer. She rises and turns to the dark door.] Miss McBride!

  [Gloria’s only answer is another gasp.]

  MISS YORKE [gently]: Gloria? Gloria?

  GLORIA: I’m all trembling again, I—

  MISS YORKE: You’ve only got one more class.

  GLORIA: —It’s—geology!

  MISS YORKE: Would you rather go home now?

  [Gloria nods.]

  MISS YORKE: I think someone in the class should take Miss McBride to the streetcar.

  [The Romantically Handsome Youth steps out of the wings.]

  YOUTH: I’m the, the, the, the boy—that helped her get the fossils out of rock, and put, put, put—her on the streetcar.

  MISS YORKE: Then would you please do it again.

  YOUTH: Gloria? [He takes her hand and leads her into the wings.]

  MISS YORKE: The lesson— [She takes a sip from a glass of water on her desk.] The lesson to be learned from Miss McBride’s theme is simple in a way and difficult in a way. I think it is that we must dare to experience deep emotion even though it may make us cry and tremble. Will the monitor for this week please erase the blackboard. [A bell rings.] The class is dismissed. Not for several million years, just till tomorrow. Good night. Good night . . . [The white room is dimmed out.]

  SCENE SIX

  Gloria and the Romantically Handsome Youth are sitting on a bench on the projected area of the stage. There is a silence between them.

  GLORIA: I hoped you’d say something first.

  YOUTH: —I—stutter.

  GLORIA: I know that.

  YOUTH: —Sometimes it makes me speechless.

  GLORIA: It makes no difference to me except that I know it seems important to you.

  YOUTH: —To speak is an agony to me.

  GLORIA: Even with me? Richard?

  YOUTH: —Not as much with you. —At school when I’m asked a question, any question, no matter how well I know the answer—to answer’s an agony to me.

  GLORIA: I remember one day you were asked to read something aloud in our Spanish class, you said, “I stutter,” and old Mr. Quinn said to you “My dear boy, we all know that.”

  YOUTH: —Yes, I—remember that—day.

  GLORIA: I thought it was kind of Mr. Quinn to try to reassure you that way.

  YOUTH: —Sometimes you—feel humiliated—by kindness like that, it seems like—condescension.

  GLORIA: But it wasn’t. It wasn’t condescension. It was sympathy.

  YOUTH: —Sympathy—is condescension sometimes, and—you don’t want it.

  GLORIA: It was the kind of kindness that’s not at all condescending.

  YOUTH: —It didn’t help. —I think it—made it—worse.

  GLORIA: Do you feel that my feeling for you is condescending sympathy or kindness?

  YOUTH: —No.

  GLORIA: What you should do, before you speak in school or anywhere else, you should say to yourself, “There’s no boy in the school or in the town of Bethesda that’s handsome as I am.”

  YOUTH: —Would you—you wouldn’t want me—I’m sure you wouldn’t want me—to be—vain enough to—think such a thing as—

  GLORIA: I want you to feel confidence in yourself. There’s no light in the house. We’re sitting in the middle of a field of wildflowers. There’s no one to see us. Would it shock you if I took off my dress so it wouldn’t be stained by the clover if we lay down in the clover?

  YOUTH: —No. —No, it wouldn’t. I—don’t think it would, but—

  GLORIA [rising from the bench]: You’re sure it wouldn’t disturb you or embarrass you at all?

  YOUTH: I’ve had no experience at—what you’re—suggesting.

  GLORIA: I didn’t think you’d had any but I think you ought to have some.

  [There is a pause.]

  YOUTH: Maybe I—

  GLORIA: —No?

  YOUTH: —It’s—

  GLORIA: What?

  YOUTH: —Something I’ve—had no experience at, and—

  GLORIA: And feel you wouldn’t enjoy?

  YOUTH: —I—

  GLORIA: If I said that I loved you?

  YOUTH: —I—

  GLORIA: The worst that could happen to you is getting clover stains on your white shirt and trousers, and even that could be avoided, you know. [Pause.] Close your eyes for a minute or look the other way.

  [He follows her instruction. She unfastens and steps out of her dress, places it over the bench, and crosses into the wings. After a pause he turns cautiously toward the wings. There is the sound of the distant banjo for a minute.]

  YOUTH: Gloria?

  GLORIA [from the wings]: Look for me. Find me. I’ll be invisible to everyone in the world except to you. I mean if you want to find me.

  YOUTH: I want to—find you, but—I don’t know a thing.

  GLORIA [offstage]: Can you tell where my voice comes from?

  YOUTH: —Yes.

  GLORIA [offstage]: Then if you want to find me, come the way that you hear my voice coming from. I’m not far away. The expedition won’t be the least bit exhausting . . .

  [As he starts toward her—the scene dims out.]

  SCENE SEVEN

  The white room: outside, night. Three crones bearing wooden stools, sewing equipment and a large hourglass, enter through the dark door. Their speech is in Irish brogue.

  ONE: I like it not. I suppose we will have to identify ourselves as The Fatal Sisters—which sounds like three hook-nosed spinsters with barely a tooth among ’em.

  THREE: An assignment is an assignment.

  TWO: And a philosophical attitude is a sign of age advancing.

  THREE: Be that as it may, we’ll set here for a spell. Set down the hourglass where we can watch it without twisting our heads off our necks.

  [One sets the hourglass downstage. The crones sit behind it. The one called Two is munching at a sausage. Three snatches it from her and tosses it into the orchestra pit.]

  TWO: Ow, I wasn’t done with it.

  THREE: Wipe the grease off your mouth before I make the announcement.

  [Two swipes at her mouth with her sleeve. Three has remained standing before her stool.]

  THREE [announcing]: We are The Fatal Sisters, dispatched to this location to stitch on our fabrics the outcome of a certain initiation occurring in a field of wildflowers.

  ONE: Be more specific about it.

  THREE: It involves a romantically handsome youth with a stammer and a girl of no less beauty. The Fatal Sisters are not unconcerned with the always precarious matter of—

  TWO: Why say more? Ow, let’s get on with it.

  [A woman, with the voice of a wildcat, howls off.]

  ONE [unsurprised]: That sounds to me like her man has fetched her a clout.

  TWO: That he did, and not a light one, aither.

  THREE: She interferes with his drinking, she hides his bottle.

  ONE: Little good does it do to hide a drinking man’s bottle, and she’s been long enough in this world to ’ave discovered that fact.

  TWO: That she has, t’ be sure, and for her trouble the woman is fetched a clout by her man, and howls about it so the neighborhood, knows and the social prestige of the couple is graded not up but down.

  ONE: Ow, but ye see, the woman is lacking more than a little up here. [She taps her forehead.] And her man would receive no ribbon of honor for a thing but his thing, which rarely he’s sober enough t’ do more with than piss off his pints in a ditch when he comes staggering home.

  THREE: Sisters, heed your talk an’ watch your stitching.

  ONE: Ow, but I doubt we’re more than a vaudeville turn, and not much of that.

  THREE: Sisters, stitch, the sooner to be transported to places that s
uit us better.

  TWO: Once upon a time a poet spoke of us. “The Eumenides,” he said, “are disclosed in a window embrasure.”

  ONE: We stitched his death with regret.

  TWO: I hope their motion up there— [She points up.] —is less than temporary.

  THREE: I have them both undressed now in the field of wildflowers.

  ONE: A boy that stammers might not get a ready erection, or ejaculate too quick.

  TWO: Well, I ever, I never!

  THREE: No premature hints, stitch away.

  TWO: The hourglass hints, stitch away.

  THREE: Turn it, sisters, one of you or the aither. It can’t be disregarded.

  TWO: It’s not my turn to turn it.

  ONE: Then let it go unturned till the end of time.

  [Three rises, muttering, and turns the hourglass. Then she turns a disdainful look on One and Two.]

  THREE: She’s got his belt off him.

  TWO: She’s unbuttoned his fly.

  ONE: Progress. Ow, he’s a broth of a boy!

  THREE: It comes but once in a lifetime: the first, frightening rapture.

  ONE: Her young-looking mother is half demented over a lighthearted man.

  TWO: Will Mr. Merriwether return from Memphis?

  THREE: Tell no secrets, sisters. Just stitch away.

  ONE: Sometimes I wonder if we know what we do.

  THREE: Know it or not we do it, it’s our assignment on earth.

  TWO: Ow, but she’s gone philosophical on us this night here. Know what I’d like?

  THREE: What ye’d like ye’re not very likely to get.

  TWO: I can weave the desire for it into the fabric, sister.

  ONE: Ow!

  THREE: What’s the matter now with ye?

  ONE: Stuck meself with me needle.

  THREE: Because ye stitch with no mind.

  TWO: Why don’t we put down our needles and our fabrics for tea or a drap o’ the creature?

  ONE: Aye, fetch ’em both from the dark room back of ye, sisters, and faster we’ll stitch with ’em, in our old, cold bellies.

  [Two goes into the dark door.]

  THREE: How her bones do creak!

  TWO: Immortality has she if she likes it or not.

  THREE: Assignment, that we have. All with creakin’ knee joints that’ll support the next thing to forever, all of stitching our fabrics always all the universe over, till the hourglass breaks and I never have seen an object more permanent-looking. Forever pleases me not. It’s a condemnation.

  [One returns to the white room bearing on a tray a bottle, kettle and mugs.]

  ONE: Out of the peat bogs she creaks, bearing her pewter kettle, her cups, unscoured, and her bottle of rye.

  THREE: Hush a minute, sister. Yes. In a field of wildflowers, the lovely young girl has imparted a tender knowledge to the boy and he’ll stammer no more.

  [The white room dims out.]

  SCENE EIGHT

  Louise comes out of the purple-dark curtains. Carefully she removes an iridescent fan from the arrangement of fantastic articles on the table. She stands holding it a moment against the bosom of her white dress, as if waiting for a signal to move. The crescent-shaped extension of the stage is projected, its white bulbs are lighted, the distant banjo begins to play a ragtime piece.

  Louise nods as if the signal had been given and steps out on the stage right end of the extension and begins to move along it. Her crossing of the extension should be choreographed: it is dance-like. There are several pauses in which she turns to the audience with a gesture of the fan and a smile that has a slight touch of defiance in it. Each time she pauses, she lifts her summer-white dress above her white slippers. When she arrives at the stage left end of the stage extension, or runway, she stops as two stagehands remove her table and replace it with a desk and several wicker chairs. They set two female dummies on the stage left side of the desk.

  Nora enters the white room, finishing a candy bar. The banjo stops. Then Louise steps onto the stage, the lights go out on the extension or runway and the runway draws back. Louise seats herself in a chair beside Nora, who is licking chocolate from her fingers.

  NORA: Oh. Louise. Hello.

  LOUISE: Good evening, Nora.

  NORA: Did you receive one last night?

  LOUISE: What? Oh. No, not a one.

  NORA: What time did you go to bed?

  LOUISE: I think about nine-thirty.

  NORA: A little too early for this one. I received this one at eleven-thirty.

  LOUISE: I didn’t want to receive one.

  NORA: Oh, you never receive one if you don’t want to, dear.

  LOUISE: It’s just as well I didn’t receive one last night. I wasn’t feeling up to it.

  NORA: It’s just as well you didn’t.

  LOUISE: Was it a tragic one that you received?

  NORA: Yes. Very. And it appeared to me naked.

  LOUISE: I’ve never received an apparition that appeared to me naked.

  NORA: I don’t think I’ve received a naked one more than two or three times before and I refused to look at them.

  LOUISE: Yes, of course, they don’t know it, but it’s presumptuous of them to appear to you naked.

  NORA: Yes, very presumptuous of them, even though they don’t know it.

  LOUISE: Perhaps it was an ancient one.

  NORA: You mean from ancient times?

  LOUISE: Yes, from ancient times.

  NORA: Oh, the ancient ones, misty, dear, very misty. They don’t solidify well, not well at all, and if they speak, it’s a whisper in some ancient language so if they identify themselves to you, it’s useless. In your record book you just put down apparition number whatever the number is. They’re really not worth receiving. Once I received an ancient one with a spear, with a spear or a club, and it was so filmy I thought at first it was a puff of smoke.

  LOUISE [indifferently]: Oh, now, no.

  NORA: Oh, now, yes, not no. I was baking biscuits and I thought the biscuits were burning until I heard this whisper soft as the buzz of a fly in the next room. Um-hmm. Another ancient one dissolved in the house, right before my eyes, gold helmet and all.

  LOUISE: I didn’t know that apparitions wore out.

  NORA: Oh, yes, dear, they wear out like everything else under the sun and I guess over it, too.

  LOUISE: This one you received last night, whose apparition was it?

  NORA: How would I know? It whispered in Greek or Latin or Egyptian or something. All I could do was list it in my book as apparition number eight hundred and fifty-six, unidentified, dissolved in my kitchen.

  LOUISE: Didn’t it seem sort of tragic?

  NORA: I hate to say it Louise, but if I received a cheerful apparition it would be for the first time.

  LOUISE: I’ve never received a cheerful apparition. In fact all the ones I’ve received have been more or less tragic.

  NORA: I know they don’t feel anything but sometimes I suspect that they know they don’t feel anything. No. They don’t know anything so how could they know that they don’t feel anything.

  LOUISE: I have a feeling that sooner or later I’ll receive the apparition of a Saint and I hope it’s Saint Francis.

  NORA: I hope you will if you want to, but they’re tragic, you know. I mean they’ve mostly been martyred. In fact the two saints I’ve received had both been martyred and I slept not a wink after their appearance and almost shivered the bed down.

  LOUISE: The one I want to receive is Saint Francis of the Flowers.

  NORA: Even him—not likely to be too cheerful.

  [The French Club Instructor enters through the dark doorway, bearing a suitcase. He is a brisk little man, but is disconcerted to find only four members in the room.]

  INSTRUCTOR: Mon dieu
, seulement quatre ce soir. Translate. What did I say?

  LOUISE: You said, “My God, only four this evening.”

  NORA: Mrs. Biddle asked me to tell you she was taking her little boy to the movies and would be a bit late.

  INSTRUCTOR: Hmmm. Be that as it may. Mrs. Biddle should know that competing with the movies isn’t our raison d’être. What was the phrase that I spoke in French, ladies?

  NORA: I didn’t catch it, I’m sorry.

  LOUISE: You said, “reason for existence.”

  INSTRUCTOR: Bon. C’est vrai. What did I say in French, ladies?

  NORA AND LOUISE [together]: You said, “Fine. It’s true.”

  INSTRUCTOR: Mrs. Biddle and all of us should know that our club existed for two things, the study of the French language and the confession and purgation of what is troubling our hearts.

  [Mrs. Biddle, a mousy little woman, enters from the dark door.]

  MRS. BIDDLE: Bonsoir, maître et mesdames du cercle.

  INSTRUCTOR: Merci, Madame Biddle. Vous êtes un peu en retard. What did I say in French?

  MRS. BIDDLE: You, uh, maître, you said I was late—a little . . .

  INSTRUCTOR: I’m glad that you understood me. Now, then. Maintenant. Who has something in her heart to speak tonight? Behind us is a dark doorway. It represents l’élément du mystère de la vie. What did I say? [There is silence during a pause.] Mrs. McBride, translate what I said into English.

  LOUISE: It doesn’t need translation. We’ve always known it.

  INSTRUCTOR: Oui, mais quelque fois, la plupart des fois—sans pensées, sans paroles. What did I say? Translate, please, ladies.

  THE LADIES: Yes, but sometimes, the greater part of the time, without thoughts or words about it.

  INSTRUCTOR: An incorrect translation. Mrs. McBride?

  LOUISE: Monsieur?

  INSTRUCTOR: Regardless of your realization that it is too familiar, too cliché, would you please oblige me by translating the remark that I made in French about what the dark doorway behind us represents in our lives.

  LOUISE: The dark doorway behind us represents the element of mystery in our lives.

  INSTRUCTOR: Assez bien. Translate. Tout le cercle.