Three Plays of Tennessee Williams

by Tennessee Williams

  [Mitch grunts.]

  I'm afraid you won't like it, but try it, and maybe you will.

  MITCH: I told you already I don't want none of his liquor and I mean it. You ought to lay off his liquor. He says you been lapping it up all summer like a wildcat!

  BLANCHE: What a fantastic statement! Fantastic of him to say it, fantastic of you to repeat it! I won't descend to the level of such cheap accusations to answer them, even!

  MITCH: Huh.

  BLANCHE: What's in your mind? I see something in your eyes!

  MITCH [getting up]: It's dark in here.

  BLANCHE: I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me.

  MITCH: I don't think I ever seen you in the light.

  [Blanche laughs breathlessly]

  That's a fact!

  BLANCHE: Is it?

  MITCH: I've never seen you in the afternoon.

  BLANCHE: Whose fault is that?

  MITCH: You never want to go out in the afternoon.

  BLANCHE: Why, Mitch, you're at the plant in the afternoon!

  MITCH: Not Sunday afternoon. I've asked you to go out with me sometimes on Sundays but you always make an excuse. You never want to go out till after six and then it's always some place that's not lighted much.

  BLANCHE: There is some obscure meaning in this but I fail to catch it.

  MITCH: What it means is I've never had a real good look at you, Blanche. Let's turn the light on here.

  BLANCHE [fearfully]: Light? Which light? What for?

  MITCH: This one with the paper thing on it.

  [He tears the paper lantern off the light bulb. She utters a frightened gasp.]

  BLANCHE: What did you do that for?

  MITCH: So I can take a look at you good and plain!

  BLANCHE: Of course you don't really mean to be insulting!

  MITCH: No, just realistic.

  BLANCHE: I don't want realism. I want magic!

  [Mitch laughs]

  Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!—Don't turn the light on!

  [Mitch crosses to the switch. He turns the light on and stares at her. She cries out and covers her face. He turns the light off again.]

  MITCH [slowly and bitterly]: I don't mind you being older than what I thought. But all the rest of it—Christ! That pitch about your ideals being so old-fashioned and all the malarkey that you've dished out all summer. Oh, I knew you weren't sixteen any more. But I was a fool enough to believe you was straight.

  BLANCHE: Who told you I wasn't—'straight'? My loving brother-in-law. And you believed him.

  MITCH: I called him a liar at first And then I checked on the story. First I asked our supply-man who travels through Laure. And then I talked directly over long-distance to this merchant….

  BLANCHE: Who is this merchant?

  MITCH: Kiefaber.

  BLANCHE: The merchant Kiefaber of Laurel! I know the man. He whistled at me. I put him in his place. So now for revenge he makes up stories about me.

  MITCH: Three people, Kiefaber, Stanley and Shaw, swore to them!

  BLANCHE: Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub! And such a filthy tub!

  MITCH: Didn't you stay at a hotel called the Flamingo?

  BLANCHE: Flamingo? No! Tarantula was the name of it! I stayed at a hotel called the Tarantula Arms!

  MITCH [stupidly]: Tarantula?

  BLANCHE: Yes, a big spider! That's where I brought my victims.

  [She pours herself another drink]

  Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan—intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with.... I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection—here and there, in the most—unlikely places—even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy but—somebody wrote the superintendent about it—"This woman is morally unfit for her position!"

  [She throws back her head with convulsive, sobbing laughter. Then she repeats the statement, gasps, and drinks.]

  True? Yes, I suppose—unfit somehow—anyway... So I came here. There was nowhere else I could go. I was played out. You know what played out is? My youth was suddenly gone up the water-spout, and—I met you. You said you needed somebody. Well, I needed somebody, too. I thanked God for you, because you seemed to be gentle—a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in! But I guess I was asking, hoping—too much! Kiefaber, Stanley and Shaw have tied an old tin can to the tail of the kite.

  [There is a pause. Mitch stares at her dumbly.]

  MITCH: You lied to me, Blanche.

  BLANCHE: Don't say I lied to you.

  MITCH: Lies, lies, inside and out, all lies.

  BLANCHE: Never inside, I didn't lie in my heart....

  [A Vendor comes around the corner. She is a blind Mexican woman in a dark shawl, carrying bunches of those gaudy tin flowers that lower class Mexicans display at funerals and other festive occasions. She is calling barely audibly. Her figure is only faintly visible outside the building.]

  MEXICAN WOMAN: Flores. Flores. Flores para los muertos. Flores. Flores.

  BLANCHE: What? Oh! Somebody outside...

  [She goes to the door. opens it and stares at the Mexican Woman.]

  MEXICAN WOMAN [she is at the door and offers Blanche some of her flowers]: Flores? Flores para los muertos?

  BLANCHE [frightened]: No, no! Not now! Not now!

  [She darts back into the apartment, slamming the door.]

  MEXICAN WOMAN [she turns away and starts to move down the street]: Flores para los muertos.

  [The polka tune fades in.]

  BLANCHE [as if to herself]: Crumble and fade and—regrets—recriminations... "If you'd done this, it wouldn't've cost me that!"

  MEXICAN WOMAN: Corones para los muertos. Corones...

  BLANCHE: Legacies! Huh... And other things such as bloodstained pillow-slips—"Her linen needs changing"—"Yes Mother." But couldn't we get a colored girl to do it?" No, we couldn't of course. Everything gone but the—

  MEXICAN WOMAN: Flores….

  BLANCHE: Death—I used to sit here and she used to sit over there and death was as close as you are.... We didn't dare even admit we had ever heard of it!

  MEXICAN WOMAN: Flores para los muertos, flores—flores...

  BLANCHE: The opposite is desire. So do you wonder? How could you possibly wonder! Not far from Belle Reve, before we had lost Belle Reve, was a camp where they trained young soldiers. On Saturday nights they would go in town to get drunk—

  MEXICAN WOMAN [softly]: Corones...

  BLANCHE: —and on the way back they would stagger onto my lawn and call—"Blanche! Blanche!"— The deaf old lady remaining suspected nothing. But sometimes I slipped outside to answer their calls.... Later the paddy-wagon would gather them up like daisies... the long way home....

  [The Mexican Woman turns slowly and drifts back off with her soft mournful cries. Blanche goes to the dresser and leans forward on it. After a moment, Mitch rises and follows her purposefully. The polka music fades away. He places his hands on her waist and tries to turn her about.]

  BLANCHE: What do you want?

  MITCH [fumbling to embrace her]: What I been missing all summer.

  BLANCHE: Then marry me, Mitch!

  MITCH: I don't think I want to marry you any more.

  BLANCHE: No?

  MITCH [dropping his hands from her waist]: You're not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.

  BLANCHE: Go away, then.

  [He stares at her]

  Get out of here quick before I start screaming fire!

  [Her throat is tightening with hysteria]

  Get out of here quick before I start screaming fire.

  [He still remains staring. She suddenly rushes to the big window with its pale blue square of the soft summer light and cries wildly.]

  Fire! Fire! Fire!


  [With a startled, gasp, Mitch turns and goes out the outer door, clatters awkwardly down the steps and around the corner of the building, Blanche staggers back from the window and falls to her knees. The distant piano is slow and blue.]

  SCENE TEN

  It is a few hours later that night. Blanche has been drinking fairly steadily since Mitch left. She has dragged her wardrobe trunk into the center of the bedroom. It hangs open with flowery dresses thrown across it. As the drinking and packing went on, a mood of hysterical exhilaration came into her and she has decked herself out in a somewhat soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown and a pair of scuffed silver slippers with brilliants set in their heels. Now she is placing the rhinestone tiara on her head before the mirror of the dressing-table and murmuring excitedly as if to a group of spectral admirers.

  BLANCHE: How about taking a swim, a moonlight swim at the old rock quarry? If anyone's sober enough to drive a car! Ha-ha! Best way in the world to stop your head buzzing! Only you've got to be careful to dive where the deep pool is—if you hit a rock you don't come up till tomorrow....

  [Tremblingly she lifts the hand mirror for a closer inspection. She catches her breath and slams the mirror face down with such violence that the glass cracks. She moans a little and attempts to rise.

  Stanley appears around the corner of the building. He still has on the vivid green silk bowling shirt. As he rounds the corner the honky-tonk music is heard. It continues softly throughout the scene.

  He enters the kitchen, slamming the door. As he peers in at Blanche, he gives a low whistle. He has had a few drinks on the way and has brought some quart beer bottles home with him.]

  BLANCHE: How is my sister?

  STANLEY: She is doing okay.

  BLANCHE: And how is the baby?

  STANLEY [grinning amiably]: The baby won't come before morning so they told me to go home and get a little shuteye.

  BLANCHE: Does that mean we are to be alone in here?

  STANLEY: Yep. Just me and you, Blanche. Unless you got somebody hid under the bed. What've you got on those fine feathers for?

  BLANCHE: Oh, that's right. You left before my wire came.

  STANLEY: You got a wire?

  BLANCHE: I received a telegram from an old admirer of mine.

  STANLEY: Anything good?

  BLANCHE: I think so. An invitation.

  STANLEY: What to? A fireman's ball?

  BLANCHE [throwing back her head]: A cruise of the Caribbean on a yacht!

  STANLEY: Well, well. What do you know?

  BLANCHE: I have never been so surprised in my life.

  STANLEY: I guess not.

  BLANCHE: It came like a bolt from the blue!

  STANLEY: Who did you say it was from?

  BLANCHE: An old beau of mine.

  STANLEY: The one that give you the white fox-pieces?

  BLANCHE: Mr. Shep Huntleigh. I wore his ATO pin my last year at college. I hadn't seen him again until last Christmas. I ran into him on Biscayne Boulevard. Then—just now—this wire—inviting me on a cruise of the Caribbean! The problem is clothes. I tore into my trunk to see what I have that's suitable for the tropics!

  STANLEY: And come up with that—gorgeous—diamond—tiara?

  BLANCHE: This old relic? Ha-ha! It's only rhinestones.

  STANLEY: Gosh. I thought it was Tiffany diamonds.

  [He unbuttons his shirt.]

  BLANCHE: Well, anyhow, I shall be entertained in style.

  STANLEY: Uh-huh. It goes to show, you never know what is coming.

  BLANCHE: Just when I thought my luck had begun to fail me—

  STANLEY: Into the picture pops this Miami millionaire.

  BLANCHE: This man is not from Miami. This man is from Dallas.

  STANLEY: This man is from Dallas?

  BLANCHE: Yes, this man is from Dallas where gold spouts out of the ground!

  STANLEY: Well, just so he's from somewhere!

  [He starts removing his shirt.]

  BLANCHE: Close the curtains before you undress any further.

  STANLEY [amiably]: This is all I'm going to undress right now.

  [He rips the sack off a quart beer bottle]

  Seen a bottle opener?

  [She moves slowly toward the dresser, where she stands with her hands knotted together.]

  I used to have a cousin who could open a beer bottle with his teeth.

  [Pounding the bottle cap on the corner of table]

  That was his only accomplishment, all he could do—he was just a human bottle-opener. And then one time, at a wedding party, he broke his front teeth off! After that he was so ashamed of himself he used t' sneak out of the house when company came....

  [The bottle cap pops off and a geyser of foam shoots up. Stanley laughs happily, holding up the bottle over his head.]

  Ha-ha! Rain from heaven!

  [He extends the bottle toward her]

  Shall we bury the hatchet and make it a loving-cup? Huh?

  BLANCHE: No, thank you.

  STANLEY: Well, it's a red letter night for us both. You having an oil millionaire and me having a baby.

  [He goes to the bureau in the bedroom and crouches to remove something from the bottom drawer.]

  BLANCHE [drawing back]: What are you doing in here?

  STANLEY: Here's something I always break out on special occasions like this. The silk pyjamas I wore on my wedding night!

  BLANCHE: Oh.

  STANLEY: When the telephone rings and they say, "You've got a son!" I’ll tear this off and wave it like a flag!

  [He shakes out a brilliant pyjama coat]

  I guess we are both entitled to put on the dog.

  [He goes back to the kitchen with the coat over his arm.]

  BLANCHE: When I think of how divine it is going to be to have such a thing as privacy once more—I could weep with joy!

  STANLEY: This millionaire from Dallas is not going to interfere with your privacy any?

  BLANCHE: It won't be the sort of thing you have in mind. This man is a gentleman and he respects me.

  [Improvising feverishly]

  What he wants is my companionship. Having great wealth sometimes makes people lonely! A cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breeding, can enrich a man's life—immeasurably! I have those things to offer, and this doesn't take them away. Physical beauty is passing. A transitory possession. But beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart—and I have all of those things—aren't taken away, but grow! Increase with the years! How strange that I should be called a destitute woman! When I have all of these treasures locked in my heart.

  [A choked sob comes from her]

  I think of myself as a very, very rich woman! But I have been foolish—casting my pearls before swine!

  STANLEY: Swine, huh?

  BLANCHE: Yes, swine! Swine! And I'm thinking not only of you but of your friend, Mr. Mitchell. He came to see me tonight. He dared to come here in his work-clothes! And to repeat slander to me, vicious stories that he had gotten from you! I gave him his walking papers....

  STANLEY: You did, huh?

  BLANCHE: But then he came back. He returned with a box of roses to beg my forgiveness! He implored my forgiveness. But some things are not forgivable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the one unforgivable thing in my opinion and it is the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty. And so I told him, I said to him, "Thank you," but it was foolish of me to think that we could ever adapt ourselves to each other. Our ways of life are too different. Our attitudes and our backgrounds are incompatible. We have to be realistic about such things. So farewell, my friend! And let there be no hard feelings....

  STANLEY: Was this before or after the telegram came from the Texas oil millionaire?

  BLANCHE: What telegram! No! No, after! As a matter of fact, the wire came just as—

  STANLEY: As a matter of fact there wasn't no wire at all!

  BLANCHE: Oh, oh!

  STANLEY: Ther
e isn't no millionaire! And Mitch didn't come back; with roses 'cause I know where he is—

  BLANCHE: Oh!

  STANLEY: There isn't a goddam thing but imagination!

  BLANCHE: Oh!

  STANLEY: And lies and conceit and tricks!

  BLANCHE: Oh!

  STANLEY: And look at yourself! Take a look at yourself in that wornout Mardi Gras outfit, rented for fifty cents from some ragpicker! And with the crazy crown on! What queen do you think you are?