PETE: What are you talking about?
LEN: What are you doing with your hand?
PETE [coolly]: What do you think I’m doing with it? Eh? What do you think?
LEN: I don’t know.
PETE: I’ll tell you, shall I? Nothing. I’m not doing anything with it. It’s not moving. I’m doing nothing with it.
LEN: You’re holding it palm upwards.
PETE: What about it?
LEN: It’s not normal. Let’s have a look at that hand. Let’s have a look at it. [Pause. He gasps through his teeth.] You’re a homicidal maniac.
PETE: Is that a fact?
LEN: Look. Look at that hand. Look, look at it. A straight line right across the middle. Right across the middle, see? Horizontal. That’s all you’ve got. What else have you got? You’re a nut.
PETE: Oh yes?
LEN: You couldn’t find two men in a million with a hand like that. It sticks out a mile. A mile. That’s what you are, that’s exactly what you are, you’re a homicidal maniac!
[A knock on the outer door.]
PETE [rising to exit]: That’s him. [He goes off. The lights begin to fade to blackout.]
MARK: [off] Anyone here?
PETE: [off] Yes, how are you?
MARK: [off] Any tea?
PETE: [off] Polish tea.
[Blackout. The lights come up in LEN’S room—overhead lamp.
LEN is sitting at the side of the table.]
LEN: There is my table. That is a table. There is my chair. There is my table. That is a bowl of fruit. There is my chair. There are my curtains. There is no wind. It is past night and before morning. This is my room. This is a room. There is the wall-paper, on the walls. There are six walls. Eight walls. An octagon. This room is an octagon.
There are my shoes, on my feet.
This is a journey and an ambush. This is the centre of the cold, a halt to the journey and no ambush. This is the deep grass I keep to. This is the thicket in the centre of the night and the morning. There is my hundred watt bulb like a dagger. This room moves. This room is moving. It has moved. It has reached … a dead halt. This is my fixture. There is no web. All’s clear, and abundant. Perhaps a morning will arrive. If a morning arrives, it will not destroy my fixture, nor my luxury. If it is dark in the night or light, nothing obtrudes. I have my compartment. I am wedged. Here is my arrangement, and my kingdom. There are no voices. They make no hole in my side.
The doorbell rings. LEN searches for his glasses on the table, rummaging among the books. Lifts tablecloth. Is still. Searches in armchair. Then on mantlepiece. Bell rings again. He searches under table. Bell rings again. He rises, looks down, sees glasses in top pocket of jacket. Smiles, puts them on. Exits to open front door. MARK enters to below table. LEN follows.
LEN: What’s this, a suit? Where’s your carnation?
MARK: What do you think of it?
LEN: It’s not a schmutta.
MARK: It’s got a zip at the hips.
LEN: A zip at the hips? What for?
MARK: Instead of a buckle. It’s neat.
LEN: Neat? I should say it’s neat.
MARK: No turn-ups.
LEN: I can see that. Why didn’t you have turn-ups?
MARK: It’s smarter without turn-ups.
LEN: Of course it’s smarter without turn-ups.
MARK: I didn’t want it double-breasted.
LEN: Double-breasted? Of course you couldn’t have it double-breasted.
MARK: What do you think of the cloth?
LEN: The cloth? [He examines it, gasps and whistles through his teeth. At a great pace.] What a piece of cloth. What a piece of cloth. What a piece of cloth. What a piece of cloth.
What a piece of cloth.
MARK: You like the cloth?
LEN: WHAT A PIECE OF CLOTH!
MARK: What do you think of the cut?
LEN: What do I think of the cut? The cut? The cut? What a cut!
What a cut! I’ve never seen such a cut! [Pause.] [He sits and groans.]
MARK [combing his hair and sitting]: Do you know where I’ve just been?
LEN: Where?
MARK: Earls Court.
LEN: Uuuuhh! What were you doing there? That’s beside the point.
MARK: What’s the matter with Earl’s Court?
LEN: It’s a mortuary without a corpse. [Pause.] There’s a time and place for everything …
MARK: You’re right there.
LEN: What do you mean by that?
MARK: There’s a time and place for everything.
LEN: You’re right there. [Puts glasses on, rises to Mark.] Who have you been with? Actors and actresses? What’s it like when you act? Docs it please you? Does it please anyone else?
MARK: What’s wrong with acting?
LEN: It’s a time-honoured profession—it’s time-honoured. [Pause.] But what does it do? Does it please you when you walk onto a stage and everybody looks up and watches you? Maybe they don’t want to watch you at all. Maybe they’d prefer to watch someone else. Have you ever asked them? [MARK chuckles.] You should follow my example and take up mathematics. [Shouting him open book.] Look! All last night I was working at mechanics and determinants. There’s nothing like a bit of calculus to cheer you up.
Pause.
MARK: I’ll think about it.
LEN: Have you got a telephone here?
MARK: It’s your house.
LEN: Yes. What are you doing here? What do you want here?
MARK: I thought you might give me some bread and honey.
LEN: I don’t want you to become too curious in this room. There’s no place for curiosities here. Keep a sense of proportion. That’s all I ask.
MARK: That’s all.
LEN: I’ve got enough on my plate with this room as it is.
MARK: What’s the matter with it?
LEN: The rooms we live in … open and shut. [Pause.] Can’t you see? They change shape at their own will. I wouldn’t grumble if only they would keep to some consistency. But they don’t. And I can’t tell the limits, the boundaries, which I’ve been led to believe are natural. I’m all for the natural behaviour of rooms, doors, staircases, the lot. But I can’t rely on them. When, for example, I look through a train window, at night, and see the yellow lights, very clearly, I can see what they are, and I see that they’re still. But they’re only still because I’m moving. I know that they do move along with me, and when we go round a bend, they bump off. But I know that they are still, just the same. They are, after all, stuck on poles which are rooted to the earth. So they must be still, in their own right, insofar as the earth itself is still, which of course it isn’t. The point is, in a nutshell, that I can only appreciate such facts when I’m moving. When I’m still, nothing around me follows a natural course of conduct. I’m not saying I’m any criterion, I wouldn’t say that. After all, when I’m on the train I’m not really moving at all. That’s obvious. I’m in the corner seat. I’m still. I am perhaps being moved, but I do not move. Neither do the yellow lights. The train moves, granted, but what’s a train got to do with it?
MARK: Nothing.
LEN: You’re frightened.
MARK: Am I?
LEN: You’re frightened that any moment I’m liable to put a red hot burning coal in your mouth.
MARK: Am I?
LEN: But when the time comes, you see, what I shall do is place the red hot burning coal in my own mouth.
Swift blackout. PETE sits where MARK has been. Lights snap up.
I’ve got some beigels.
PETE: This is a very solid table, isn’t it?
LEN: I said I’ve got some biegels.
PETE: No thanks. How long have you had this table?
LEN: It’s a family heirloom.
PETE: Yes, I’d like a good table, and a good chair. Solid stuff.
Made for the bearer. I’d put them in a boat. Sail it down the river. A houseboat. You could sit in the cabin and look out at the water.
LEN: W
ho’d be steering?
PETE: You could park it. Park it. There’s not a soul in sight.
LEN brings half-full bottle of wine and glass to table. Reads label. Sniffs at bottle. Pours some into glass, savours then gargles, walking about. Spits wine back into glass, returns bottle and glass at sideboard, after a defensive glance at PETE. Returns to above table.
LEN [muttering]: Impossible, impossible, impossible.
PETE [briskly]: I’ve been thinking about you.
LEN: Oh?
PETE: Do you know what your trouble is? You’re not elastic.
There’s no elasticity in you. You want to be more elastic.
LEN: Elastic? Elastic. Yes, you’re quite right. Elastic. What are you talking about?
PETE: Giving up the ghost isn’t so much a failure as a tactical error. By elastic I mean being prepared for your own deviations. You don’t know where you’re going to come out next at the moment. You’re like a rotten old shirt. Buck your ideas up. They’ll lock you up before you’re much older.
LEN: No. There is a different sky each time I look. The clouds run about in my eye. I can’t do it.
PETE: The apprehension of experience must obviously be dependent upon discrimination if it’s to be considered valuable. That’s what you lack. You’ve got no idea how to preserve a distance between what you smell and what you think about it. You haven’t got the faculty for making a simple distinction between one thing and another. Every time you walk out of this door you go straight over a cliff. What you’ve got to do is nourish the power of assessment. How can you hope to assess and verify anything if you walk about with your nose stuck between your feet all day long? You knock around with Mark too much. He can’t do you any good. I know how to handle him. But I don’t think he’s your sort. Between you and me, I sometimes think he’s a man of weeds. Sometimes I think he’s just playing a game. But what game? I like him all right when you come down to it. We’re old pals. But you look at him and what do you see? An attitude. Has it substance or is it barren? Sometimes I think it’s as barren as a bombed site. He’ll be a spent force in no time if he doesn’t watch his step. [Pause.] I’ll tell you a dream I had last night. I was with a girl in a tube station, on the platform. People were rushing about. There was some sort of panic. When I looked round I saw everyone’s faces were peeling, blotched, blistered. People were screaming, booming down the tunnels. There was a fire bell clanging. When I looked at the girl I saw that her face was coming off in slabs too, like plaster. Black scabs and stains. The skin was dropping off like lumps of cat’s meat. I could hear it sizzling on the electric rails. I pulled her by the arm to get her out of there. She wouldn’t budge. Stood there, with half a face, staring at me. I screamed at her to come away. Then I thought, Christ, what’s my face like? Is that why she’s staring? Is that rotting too?
Lights change. LEN’S room. PETE and MARK looking at chess board. LEN watching them. Silence.
LEN: Eh …
[They don’t look up.]
The dwarfs are back on the job. [Pause.] I said the dwarfs are back on the job.
MARK: The what?
LEN: The dwarfs.
MARK: Oh yes?
LEN: Oh yes. They’ve been waiting for a smoke signal you see. I’ve just sent up the smoke signal.
[Pause.]
MARK: You’ve just sent it up, have you?
LEN: Yes. I’ve called them in on the job. They’ve taken up their positions. Haven’t you noticed?
PETE: I haven’t noticed. [To MARK.] Have you noticed?
MARK chuckles.
LEN: But I’ll tell you one thing. They don’t stop work until the job in hand is finished, one way or another. They never run out on a job. Oh no. They’re true professionals. Real professionals.
PETE: Listen. Can’t you see we’re trying to play chess?
Pause.
LEN: I’ve called them in to keep an eye on you two, you see. They’re going to keep a very close eye on you. So am I. We’re waiting for you to show your hand. We’re all going to keep a very close eye on you two. Me and the dwarfs.
Pause.
MARK: [referring to chess]: I think I’ve got you knackered, Pete.
PETE looks at him.
PETE: Do you?
Lights change and come up full in MARK’S roam. LEN enters with old gilt mirror. MARK follows.
MARK: Put that mirror back.
LEN: This is the best piece of furniture you’ve got in the house. It’s Spanish. No Portuguese. You’re Portuguese, aren’t you?
MARK: Put it back.
LEN: Look at your face in this mirror. Look. It’s a farce. Where are your features? You haven’t got any features. You couldn’t call those features. What are you going to do about it, eh? What’s the answer?
MARK: Mind that mirror. It’s not insured.
LEN: I saw Pete the other day. In the evening. You didn’t know that. I wonder about you. I often wonder about you. But I must keep pedalling. I must. There’s a time limit. Who have you got hiding here? You’re not alone here. What about your Esperanto? Don’t forget, anything over two ounces goes up a penny.
MARK: Thanks for the tip.
LEN: Here’s your mirror.
MARK exits with mirror. LEN picks out apple from a fruit bowl, sits in armchair staring at it. MARK returns.
This is a funny-looking apple.
[He tosses it back to MARK, who replaces it.]
Pete asked me to lend him a shilling.
MARK: Uh?
LEN: I refused.
MARK: What?
LEN: I refused downright to lend him a shilling.
MARK: What did he say to that?
LEN: Plenty. Since I left him I’ve been thinking thoughts I’ve never thought before. I’ve been thinking thoughts I’ve never thought before.
MARK: You spend too much time with Pete.
LEN: What?
MARK: Give it a rest. He doesn’t do you any good. I’m the only one who knows how to get on with him. I can handle him. You can’t. You take him too seriously. He doesn’t worry me. I know how to handle him. He doesn’t take any liberties with me.
LEN: Who says he takes liberties with me? Nobody takes liberties with me. I’m not the sort of man you can take liberties with.
MARK: You should drop it.
LEN sees toasting fork, takes it to MARK.
LEN: This is a funny toasting fork. Do you ever make any toast?
He drops the fork on the floor.
Don’t touch it! You don’t know what will happen if you touch it! You mustn’t touch it! You mustn’t bend! Wait. [Pause.] I’ll bend. I’ll… pick it up. I’m going to touch it. [Pause … softly.] There. You see? Nothing happens when I touch it. Nothing. Nothing can happen. No one would bother. [A broken sigh.] You see, I can’t see the broken glass. I can’t see the mirror I have to look through. I see the other side. The other side. But I can’t see the mirror side. [Pause.] I want to break it, all of it. But how can I break it? How can I break it when I can’t see it?
Lights fade and come up again in MARK’S room. LEN is sitting in an arm chair. MARK enters with whisky bottle and two glasses. He pours drinks for PETE and himself. PETE, who has followed him in, takes his glass. MARK sits in other armchair. Neither take any notice of LEN.
Silence.
PETE: Thinking got me into this and thinking’s got to get me out. You know what I want? An efficient idea. You know what I mean? An efficient idea. One that’ll work. Something I can pin my money on. An each way bet. Nothing’s guaranteed, I know that. But I’m willing to gamble. I gambled when I went to work in the city. I want to fight them on their own ground, not moan about them from a distance. I did it and I’m still living. But I’ve had my fill of these city guttersnipes—all that scavenging scum! They’re the sort of people, who, if the gates of heaven opened to them, all they’d feel would be a draught. I’m wasting away down there. The time has come to act. I’m after something truly workable, something deserving of the proper
and active and voluntary application of my own powers. And I’ll find it.
LEN: I squashed a tiny insect on a plate the other day. And I brushed the remains off my finger with my thumb. Then I saw that the fragments were growing, like fluff. As they were falling, they were becoming larger, like fluff. I had put my hand into the body of a dead bird.
PETE: The trouble is, you’ve got to be quite sure of what you mean by efficient. Look at a nutcracker. You press the cracker and the cracker cracks the nut. You might think that’s an exact process. It’s not. The nut cracks, but the hinge of the cracker gives out a friction which is completely incidental to the particular idea. It’s unnecessary, an escape and wastage of energy to no purpose. So there’s nothing efficient about a nutcracker. [Pete sits, drinks].
LEN: They’ve gone on a picnic.
MARK: Who?
LEN: The dwarfs.
PETE: Oh Christ. [Picks up paper.]
LEN: They’ve left me to sweep the yard, to keep the place in order. It’s a bloody liberty. They’re supposed to be keeping you under observation. What do they think I am, a bloody charlady? I can’t look after the place by myself, it’s not possible. Piles and piles and piles of muck and leavings all over the place, spewed up spewed up, I’m not a skivvy, they don’t pay me, I pay them.
MARK: Why don’t you settle down?
LEN: Oh don’t worry, it’s basically a happy relationship. I trust them. They’re very efficient. They know what they’re waiting for. But they’ve got a new game, did I tell you? It’s to do with beetles and twigs. There’s a rockery of red-hot cinder. I like watching them. Their hairs are curled and oily on their necks. Always squatting and bending, dipping their wicks in the custard. Now and again a lick of flame screws up their noses. Do you know what they do? They run wild. They yowl, they pinch, they dribble, they whimper, they gouge, and then they soothe each others’ orifices with a local ointment, and then, all gone, all forgotten, they lark about, each with his buddy, get out the nose spray and the scented syringe, settle down for the night with a bun and a doughnut.
PETE: See you Mark. [Exit.]
MARK: Why don’t you put it on the table? [Pause.] Open it up, Len. [Pause.] I’m supposed to be a friend of yours.
LEN: You’re a snake in my house.
MARK: Really?
LEN: You’re trying to buy and sell me. You think I’m a ventriloquist’s dummy. You’ve got me pinned to the wall before I open my mouth. You’ve got a tab on me, you’re buying me out of house and home, you’re a calculating bastard. [Pause.] Answer me. Say something. [Pause.] Do you understand? [Pause.] You don’t agree? [Pause.] You disagree? [Pause.] You think I’m mistaken? [Pause.] But am I? [Pause.] Both of you bastards, you’ve made a hole in my side, I can’t plug it! [Pause.] I’ve lost a kingdom. I suppose you’re taking good care of things. Did you know that you and Pete are a music hall act? What happens? What do you do when you’re alone? Do you do a jig? I suppose you’re taking good care of things. I’ve got my treasure too. It’s in my corner. Everything’s in my corner. Everything is from the corner’s point of view. I don’t hold the whip. I’m a labouring man. I do the corner’s will. I slave my guts out. I thought, at one time, that I’d escaped it, but it never dies, it’s never dead. I feed it, it’s well fed. Things that at one time seem to me of value I have no resource but to give it to eat and what was of value turns into pus. I can hide nothing. I can’t lay anything aside. Nothing can be put aside, nothing can be hidden, nothing can be saved, it waits, it eats, it’s voracious, you’re in it, Pete’s in it, you’re all in my corner. There must be somewhere else!
Harold Pinter Plays 2 Page 8
