The Traveling Companion & Other Plays

by Tennessee Williams

  THE LADIES: You said good enough.

  INSTRUCTOR: Exactement cette fois. Now. Who has something to confess. Something in the belle langue de la française.

  [There is a pause. Louise starts to rise, then sits back down.]

  NORA: Go ahead, dear. It’ll help you.

  INSTRUCTOR: Mrs. McBride, you were about to speak?

  [Louise is pressing a little white handkerchief to her nose.]

  NORA: I think she’ll speak in a minute.

  INSTRUCTOR: In the circle we mustn’t repress our emotions and the confession of them.

  NORA: She’s crying a little but I think she’ll speak up in a minute. Won’t you, dear?

  [Louise shakes her head.]

  NORA: Shall I speak, dear, till you’re ready to speak?

  [Louise nods, sniffling audibly.]

  NORA [rises]: Louise and I, we both live—

  INSTRUCTOR: En Français.

  NORA: Excusez-moi, monsieur—hier soir j’ai préparé un dîner pour deux.

  INSTRUCTOR: Will the other ladies repeat the statement of Mrs. Waddles.

  MRS. BIDDLE: Yesterday evening she prepared a dinner for two.

  INSTRUCTOR: Correct. Continuez, s’il vous plaît.

  NORA: J’avais oublié que mon mari est mort, oh, depuis longtemps, depuis vingt ans.

  INSTRUCTOR: Will the other ladies please repeat this statement of Mrs. Waddles.

  MRS. BIDDLE: She started on one subject and switched to another.

  INSTRUCTOR: Be that as it may, please speak the statement that Mrs. Waddles just made.

  MRS. BIDDLE: She said her husband had been dead for twenty years but yesterday evening she prepared a dinner for two.

  INSTRUCTOR: Continuez, s’il vous plait.

  NORA: Je crois que j’étais peut-être un peu dérangée. Hier soir. [She sits back down.]

  INSTRUCTOR: Pas du tout. I think we all know it was a natural error.

  [Louise rises again.]

  LOUISE: Même dans un rêve— [Pause. she touches her nostrils with a small white handkerchief.]

  INSTRUCTOR: Ce n’est pas tout, j’espère.

  [Louise shakes her head.]

  INSTRUCTOR: Il faut continuer. What did I say?

  THE LADIES: You said it is necessary to continue.

  INSTRUCTOR: Oui. Bien. It is necessary to continue and to complete the confession, Mme. McBride—s’il vous plaît. Obviously it is a distressing confession but it will be less distressing if it is delivered completely.

  LOUISE: Même dans un rêve— [She is overcome by tears again.]

  INSTRUCTOR: Translate, Mrs. Waddles.

  NORA: —Even in a dream.

  INSTRUCTOR: Yes, “even in a dream.” Mme. McBride, continuez, s’il vous plaît.

  LOUISE [composing herself somewhat]: Même dans un rêve on peut souffrir—

  INSTRUCTOR: Translate, Mrs. Biddle.

  MRS. BIDDLE: “Even in a dream one can suffer.”

  INSTRUCTOR: C’est correct. Merci. Mais je pense que c’est n’est pas tout. What did I say in French?

  NORA: You said you thought there was more to the confession.

  INSTRUCTOR: Yes. In essence, correct.

  NORA [to Louise]: Speak out the rest of it, dear, and you’ll feel better.

  LOUISE: Je sais. I know. Mais c’est difficile.

  INSTRUCTOR: All important confessions are difficult to speak out. Would you like to walk around the table and then complete the confession?

  LOUISE: Non, je peux le faire maintenant.

  INSTRUCTOR: Translate, ladies.

  THE LADIES: “I can do it now.”

  INSTRUCTOR: Très bien. Continuez, s’il vous plaît.

  LOUISE: Même dans un rêve on peut souffrir l’angoisse d’une séparation.

  INSTRUCTOR: Bien, bien, bien, très bien et complètement vrai et très à propos. Translate, ladies.

  THE LADIES: Very good and completely true and—appropriate.

  INSTRUCTOR: Now will you please translate the confession of Mrs. McBride.

  NORA: En français?

  INSTRUCTOR: When I say translate I mean translate into English. Will you translate, Mrs. Waddles?

  NORA: “Even in a dream you can suffer the agony of a separation.” [She touches her nostrils with a small white handkerchief, too.]

  INSTRUCTOR: Now, Ladies of Le Cercle, I have an equally difficult confession to make. [He touches his nostrils with his pocket handkerchief.] In the town of Bethesda I have had the indiscreet habit of going two nights a week, after midnight, to the Greyhound bus station for the purpose of making the acquaintance— [He rises and circles the table to compose himself somewhat.] —for the purpose of making the acquaintance of, of—some youth in the military services of the country who are so often in transit. This habit has drawn the unfavorable attention of civil authorities who called upon me today and informed me that I must remove myself from Bethesda before midnight.

  NORA: Ow. What a pity. What a dreadful shame.

  INSTRUCTOR: A pity and a disgrace but an order that it would be very unwise not to accept, so I have come here tonight with my suitcase and a bus ticket to Memphis. I have not spoken in French but I have made a confession.

  LOUISE: —Memphis is—

  INSTRUCTOR: Memphis is what?

  LOUISE: As far away as—a memory of—a dream . . .

  INSTRUCTOR: Mesdames, bonsoir—adieu—the shortest farewell is the best. (As he lifts his suitcase and exits. . . .]

  [The scene dims out.]

  ACT TWO

  SCENE ONE

  Louise and Nora are seated at opposite ends of the table in Louise’s house. They are prepared to receive an apparition.

  LOUISE AND NORA:

  TURN NOT BACK, GO ON, GO ON.

  ALL THE WORLD IS YOURS TO ROAM.

  IT ISN’T STRANGE AND SINGULAR

  TO SEEK AND FIND NO FINAL HOME.

  LOUISE: How are their traveling conditions this evening?

  NORA: Not bad at all. Comin’ across the meadow, I noticed a fair bit of breeze. One’s approachin’. The air’s gettin’ chilly, yes, by the—excuse me. I never known temperature to drop this quick, by the balls of—ow! Excuse me. I, uh.

  LOUISE: Yes, it’s all right, Nora. I’ve had some acquaintance with that part of the male anatomy and so I can understand your excited references to it. I mean to them. But perhaps the references could be less frequent, Nora.

  NORA: Cornelius, when he was sober, could—

  LOUISE: Let’s concentrate on receiving an apparition.

  NORA: Yes. Let’s.

  [An apparition of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, seated in a wheelchair, enters through the curtains. The chair is pushed by an apparition of his sister, Isabelle.]

  NORA: Ow, a pair of ’em, two of ’em at once!

  LOUISE: How do you do. Please make yourselves at home. I’m Louise McBride, a widow, and the other, uh, lady is a widow, too.

  NORA: I’m afraid these are tragic apparitions, Louise.

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: The wandering has been long.

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: Interminable, I’d call it. Come through La Mystere, Isabelle.

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: I’ve come through it, Arthur. I’m directly behind you.

  NORA: Identify yourselves, please.

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: My brother is the poet Arthur Rimbaud. I am just his sister. We are speaking English since we know you are English.

  NORA: American. How does he spell his name?

  LOUISE: Nora, will you be still?

  NORA: I need to know for my records. I got three volumes of ’em, and the names of the apparitions all spelled out, exceptin’ the ones that spoke Latin. Them that spoke Latin I didn’t encourage to linger much in my ho
use.

  LOUISE: I’m not familiar with but acquainted by reputation with the gentleman’s work.

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: At sixteen my brother became a poet. At twenty he gave it up.

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: Poetry—merde! A thing for café degenerates! Identify me as a man who traded in ivory and firearms in Aden on the Red Sea. Made enough at it to impress my mother who had a farm in the North of France. Then, for no reason, then, my knee turned to cancer. My mother was sufficiently concerned to visit the hospital in Marseilles where my leg was amputated, but not to stay more than the day of the amputation. And resented my sister Isabelle caring for me in the hospital when she, my mother, had gone back to care for the crops.

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: Forget your bitterness, Arthur. These ladies who have received us out of the mist may be oppressed by it. Oh, but what joy he gave me when he consented to receive the last rites of the church!

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: Yes, to please you. Have we ascended to heaven?

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: It seems there’s a time of—

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: Mist! Wandering mist!

  LOUISE: Would he be so kind as to recite a bit of his verse?

  [There is a pause.]

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: Yes. I will be so kind. The last verse of Le Bateau Ivre.

  NORA: Meaning? Please?

  LOUISE: The Drunken Boat.

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD:

  “Of Europe’s waters I want now only

  the cold and muddy stream where a lonely boy crouches at dusk

  to release from his hands a paper boat,

  as frail as a butterfly’s wing.”

  LOUISE: Thank you.

  NORA: Yeah. Thanks.

  LOUISE: I’ll read the whole poem at the public library. Is there, isn’t there, something I can do for you?

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: There’s something she could do. She could provide you, Isabelle, with a sheet of white paper and a pen and some ink. I want to dictate to you.

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: What do you want to dictate to me, Arthur?

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: I’m determined to return to Aden and get back at my job as a trader and I must write immediately to the head of my firm there.

  LOUISE: I don’t know where Aden is.

  NORA: I never heard of the place.

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: I have. I know the man’s name. The situation is desperate. The letter must go at once. Some paper and ink and a pen.

  LOUISE: Yes, of course, here you are.

  [She hands him the articles requested but he can’t lift a hand to receive them.]

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: Give them to my sister. I’ll dictate the letter to her and she’ll get it off post express. [He begins to dictate the letter.] Cher Monsieur Le Directeur: Please let me know at once when my stretcher can be carried aboard a vessel in the morning. We are at the port of Marseilles and any dog in the street can tell you that I am completely paralyzed.

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: Oh, but Arthur, that’s no way to apply for a position.

  APPARITION OF RIMBAUD: They know me. Trust me. I was excellent as a trader in ivory and—

  APPARITION OF ISABELLE: He’s closed his eyes now. We will go on. Good night . . .

  [She wheels her brother back through the curtained door.]

  LOUISE: Nora, your teeth are chattering with the cold.

  NORA: That they are. I couldn’t feel colder if I was a plucked hen on ice.

  LOUISE: Go home and put a comforter on your bed. What I’ll do is put on a coat and make a few changes in the arrangement of articles on the table. Good night, Nora, sleep tight.

  NORA [starting toward the door]: I’ll drop in tomorrow evening.

  LOUISE: You’re always welcome, Nora. But give me a call on the telephone first because it’s possible that tomorrow a friend of mine who’s staying a while in Memphis might return to—what’s the name of this town?

  NORA: Louise, go straight to bed and forget everything but the comfort of sleep. [She exits.]

  LOUISE: The possibilities of the possibilities are sans fin. Translate. Endless. [During this line the stage is dimmed out.]

  SCENE TWO

  The white room as it appears in the home of Louise. Louise is seated at an end of the table: beside her is a pitcher of iced tea and some glasses. Absently, she pours herself a glass of the tea, then absently dumps the tea back in the pitcher. Nora enters through the dark door.

  NORA: Louise?

  LOUISE: Nora.

  NORA: I was planning to come over but I waited till I saw your daughter, who looks more like your sister, come out of the house, on her way to the public library, I suppose, so she, uh, could let me in, and I, uh, wouldn’t disturb you.

  LOUISE: I see. Would you like some ice tea?

  NORA: No, thanks, dear. Ice tea and me don’t agree.

  LOUISE: I have nothing else to offer.

  NORA: Your company’s more than enough.

  LOUISE: You’re easily pleased.

  NORA: I wouldn’t say that at all. I invited an apparition but the air’s not stirring enough to give ’em locomotion.

  [The conversation comes to a halt that lasts for half a minute. Nora is holding a napkin-covered plate in her lap.]

  NORA: Oh! I almost forgot it! I brought you over an upside-down cake, baked two of ’em, one for you and the other for myself!

  LOUISE: What was that? I didn’t hear what you said.

  NORA: —Just that I— [She puts on glasses and peers anxiously at Louise from her end of the table. she decides to leave the speech unfinished. Soundlessly, with a stealthy expression, she sets the cake on the table.]

  LOUISE: Did you set something on the table?

  NORA: I just set down the upside-down cake on a vacant spot on the table.

  LOUISE: There is no such thing as a vacant spot on the table.

  NORA: Ow, but there was a space with nothing on it, I didn’t move anything, not a thing, not an inch!

  LOUISE: The spaces on the table are just as important as the articles on the table. Is that over your head?

  NORA: I’ve seen your pitcher of ice tea on the table and glasses for it.

  LOUISE: The pitcher of ice tea and the glasses for it are part of the composition.

  NORA: The what of the what did you say?

  LOUISE: In painting there’s such a thing as plastic space.

  NORA: Now that’s way over my head.

  LOUISE: It’s very simple.

  NORA: I must be too simple for it.

  LOUISE: You can be sly as a fly when pretending to be simple.

  NORA: Maybe the language was too literal for me, y’know.

  LOUISE: If you’ve ever looked at a painting in your life you must have observed some spaces in the painting that seem to be vacant.

  NORA: I’ve looked at paintings in the museum, dear, and I’ve seen vacant spaces between the objects painted.

  LOUISE: The vacant spaces are called plastic space.

  NORA: Ow?

  LOUISE: What would a painting be without spaces between the objects being painted? Rien. Translate. Nothing. And so the spaces are what a painter calls plastic.

  NORA: Plastic, y’mean, like a plastic bottle or—

  LOUISE: No. Plastic like the spaces between the objects in a painting. They give to the painting its composition like the vacant spaces on my table give to the articles on the table its arrangement. D’you understand what I’m saying or is it going through one ear and out the other?

  NORA: Well, it’s less than—totally—clairvoyant, but I do know I’ll never set another thing down on the table.

  LOUISE: The articles on the table, including the spaces between them, make up a composition that’s been admired by important apparitions such as Eleanor of Aq
uitaine.

  NORA: That’s one not in my records.

  LOUISE: A queen of the Middle Ages, stately, and not much faded.

  NORA: Ow . . .

  [There is a pause during which the volume of banjo playing goes up a little.]

  NORA: Is that a banjo playing?

  LOUISE: Yes, it’s a banjo being played or a—what did you say?

  NORA: I just remarked that it’s—another evening.

  LOUISE: An accurate observation. Time continues according to its habit. Sometimes I pick up this fan which is a white lace fan with bits of mother-of-pearl that give it a hint of a glitter. [She fans herself with it.] “I see that you have a starfish on your table.” That’s what Eleanor of Aquitaine said to me when I received her apparition. Her voice was a little faint. I said, “I beg your pardon?” And she repeated the observation not quite so faintly. I said, “Yes, Madam, there is a starfish among the articles on the table, and there is a conch shell and a rosary and a tinted photograph of a young man named Henry Merriwether and many other articles. Pick out one you’d like, any one that you care for except the tinted photograph of Mr. Merriwether.” “How kind of you,” she answered, “but I am an apparition and an apparition is unable to carry anything where it goes. Good night, my child. I must go while the wind provides me with a means of going—going . . .” [She abruptly rises.]

  NORA: Why did you jump up, Louise?

  LOUISE: REST-LESS-NESS!

  NORA: Oh. —Restlessness, yes, it’s a condition that’s sometimes called The Widow’s Complaint. There’s mild forms of it and forms that are aggravated. Sometimes a widow, especially one still young and I think it’s excusable of ’em, will, uh, take in a young man as a boarder, and, uh, things, I mean feelings, may develop between ’em, emotionally, y’know, possibly even leading to a re-marriage, but himself, ah, himself— [She blows her nose.] Run down by a beer truck on a business trip to Milwaukee while still in his thirties, bless him, after himself I felt never the possibility of a future love in my life, that devoted I was, but what I’ve been meaning to suggest to you, dear, is that you take more interest in, uh,—civic—enterprises, you know, in, uh, community activities, such as— [She can’t think of any.]

  [Louise stands motionless with tight shut eyes.]

  NORA: —Well, there must be many, such as— [She still can’t think of any.] Of course, in our case, in fields of wildflowers on the outskirts of town, we receive apparitions and it gives us a good deal of unusual, uh, distraction, but maybe your being still young and energetic calls for, if you’ll excuse me, the first suggestion, if you heard it, and—Oh, my blessed Savior, I left the front door open and someone’s come in!