CHARACTERS
THE MAN WITH THE FLOWER IN HIS MOUTH
A PEACEFUL CUSTOMER
Towards the end, at the points indicated, a WOMAN is seen at the corner, clad in black, and wearing an old hat with drooping feathers.
Scene: At the back, we see the trees of an avenue and electric lights showing through the leaves. On both sides, the last houses of a street which leads into this avenue. Among the houses on the left, a cheap all-night cafe, lath chairs and little tables on the sidewalk. In front of the houses on the right, a streetlamp, lit. On the left, where the street meets the avenue, there is another lamp affixed to the corner house; it too is lit. At intervals, the vibrant notes of a mandolin are heard in the distance.
When the curtain rises, THE MAN WITH THE FLOWER IN HIS MOUTH is sitting at a table and looking in silence at the PEACEFUL CUSTOMER who is at the next table, sucking a mint frappé through a straw.
MAN: Well, what I was just going to say. . . Here you are, a law-abiding sort of man . . . You missed your train?
CUSTOMER: By one minute. I get to the station and see the damn thing just pulling out.
MAN: You could have run after it.
CUSTOMER: Sure-but for those damn packages. I looked like an old packhorse covered with luggage. Isn't that: silly? But: you know how women are. Errands, errands, errands! You're never through. God! You know how long it took me to get my fingers on the strings of all those packages-when. I climbed out of the cab? Three solid minutes. Two packages to each finger,
MAN: What a sight! Know what I'd have done? Left 'em in the cab.
CUSTOMER: How about my wife? And my daughters? And all the other women?
MAN: They'd squawk. I'd enjoy that.
CUSTOMER: You don't seem to know how women carry on when they get out in the country.
MAN: I know exactly how they carry on. (Pause.) They tell you they won't need a thing, they can live on nothing.
CUSTOMER: Worse, they pretend they live there to save money. They go out to one of those villages*-the uglier and filthier the better-and then insist on wearing all their fanciest getups! Women! But I suppose it's their vocation. "If you're going into town, could you get me one of these-and one of those-and would it trouble you too much to get me . . ." Would it trouble you too much!" And since you'll be right next door to . . ." "Now really, darling, how do you expect me to get all that done in three hours?" "Why not? Can't you take a cab?" And the hell of it is-figuring on those three hours-I didn't bring the keys to our house here in town.
* This scene is rather obviously laid in Rome. The villages where "commuters" live are some ten miles out. (E.B.)
MAN: Quite a thing. So?.
CUSTOMER: I left my pile of packages at the station-In the parcel room. Then I went to a restaurant for supper. Then I went to the theatre-to get rid of my bad temper. The heat nearly killed me. Coming out, I say: "And now, what? It's after midnight. There isn't a train till four. All that fuss for a couple of hours of sleep? Not worth the price of the ticket." So here I am. Open all night, isn't it?
MAN: All night. (Pause.) So you left your packages in the parcel room?
CUSTOMER: Why do you ask? Don't you think they're safe? They were tied up good and . . .
MAN: Oh, sure, sure! (Pause.) I feet sure they're safe. I know how well these salesmen wrap their stuff. They make quite a specialty of It. (Pause.) I can see their hands now. What hands! They take a good big piece of paper, double thickness, sort of a reddish color, wavy lines on it-a pleasure just to look at it!-so smooth, you could press it against your cheek and feel how coot and delicate it is . . . They roll it out on the counter and then place your cloth in the middle of it with such agility-fine cloth too, neatly folded. They raise one edge of the paper with the back of the hand, lower the other one, and bring the two edges together in an elegant fold-that's just thrown in for good measure . . . Then they fold the corners down In it triangle with its apex turned in like this. Then they reach out with one hand for the box of string, instinctively pull off just exactly enough, and de up the parcel so quickly you haven't even time to admire their virtuosity-the little loop is ready for your finger!
CUSTOMER: Anyone can see you've given a lot of attention to this matter.
MAN: Have I! My dear man, I spend whole days at it. What's more, I can spend a solid hour at a single store window. I lose myself in it. I seem to be that piece of silk, I'd like to be that piece of silk, that bit of braid, that ribbon-red or blue that the salesgirls are measuring with their tape and-you've seen what they do with it before they wrap it up?-they twist it round the thumb and little finger of their left hand in it figure eight! (Pause.) I look at the shoppers as they come out of the store with their bundle on their finger or in their left hand-or under their arm. I watch them pass. My eyes follow them till they're out of sight. I imagine, oh, I Imagine so many, many things, you've no idea, how could you have? (Pause. Then, darkly, as to himself) All the same, it helps.
CUSTOMER: What helps?
MAN: Latching on-to life. With the imagination. Like a creeper around the bars of a gate. (Pause.) Giving it no rest-my imagination, I mean-clinging, clinging with my imagination to the lives of others-all the time. Not people I know, of course. I couldn't do that. That'd be annoying, it'd nauseate me if they knew. No. Just strangers. With them my imagination can work freely. Not capriciously, though. Oh no, I take account of the smallest things I can find out about them. You've no idea how my imagination functions. I work my way in. In! I get to see this man's house-or that man's, I live in it, I feel I belong there. And I begin to notice-you know how a house, any old house, has its own air, how there's something special about the air in it? Your ho ' use? Mine? Of course, in your own house, you don't notice it any more, it's your air, the air of your life, isn't it? Uh huh. I see you agree
CUSTOMER: I only meant . . . well, I was thinking what a good time you must have imagining all this!
MAN (annoyed, after thinking a moment): Good time? I had a-!
CUSTOMER: Good time, yes. I can just see you
MAN: Tell me something. Did you ever consult an eminent physician?
CUSTOMER: Me? Why should I? I'm not sick!
MAN: Just a moment. I ask because I'd like to know if you ever saw a fine doctor's waiting room-full of patients waiting their turn?
CUSTOMER: Well, yes. I once had to take my little girl. She's nervous.
MAN: Okay. You needn't tell me. It's the waiting room . . . (Pause.) Have you ever given them much attention? The old-fashioned couch with dark covers, the upholstered table chairs that don't match as a rule , . . the armchairs? Staff bought at sales and. auctions, coming together there by accident, for the convenience of the patients. It doesn't belong to the house. The doctor has quite another sort of room for himself, for his wife, his wife's friends . . . lavish . . . lovely ... If you took one of the chairs from the drawing room and put it in the-waiting room, why, it'd stick out like a sore thumb. Not that the waiting room isn't just right nothing special of course but quite proper, quite respectable . . . I'd like to know if you-when you went with your little girl-if you took a good look at the chair you sat in?
CUSTOMER: Well, um, no, I guess I didn't
MAN: Of course not You weren't sick . . . (Pause.) But often even the sick don't notice. They're all, taken up with their sickness. (Pause.) How many times they sit, some of them, staring at their finger which is making meaningless markings an the polished arm of the chair. They're thinking-so they don't see. (Pause.) And what in impression you get when you get out of the doctor's office and cross the waiting room and see the chair you'd been sitting in awaiting sentence on the as yet unknown sickness just a short time before! Now, there's another patient on it and he's hugging his secret sickness too. Or it's empty-oh, how impassive it looks! -waiting for Mr. X to come and sit on it (Pause.) What were we saying? Oh, yes. The pleasure of imagining things. And I suddenly thought of a chair in one of those waiting rooms. Why?
CUSTOMER: Yes, it certainly . . .
MAN: You don't see the connection? Neither do I (Pause.) You recall an image, you recall another image, they're unrelated, and yet--they're not unrelated--for you. Oh, no, they have their reasons, they stem from your experience. Of course you have to pretend they don't when you talk, you have to forget them. Most often they're so illogical, these ... analogies. (Pause.) The connection could be this, maybe. Listen. Do you think those chain get any pleasure from imagining which patient will sit on them next? What sickness lurks inside him? Where he'll go, what he'll do after this visit? Of course they don't. And it's the same with me! I get no pleasure from it. There are those poor chairs and here am I. They open their arms to the doctor's patients, I open mine to . . . this person or that. You for instance. And yet I get no pleasure--no pleasure at all--from the train you missed, the family waiting for that train in the country, your other little troubles . . .
CUSTOMER: I've plenty, you know that?
MAN: You should thank God they're little. (Pause.) Some people have big troubles, my dear sir. (Pause.) As I was saying, I feel die need to latch on--by the skin of my . . . imagination--to the lives of others. Yet I get no pleasure from this. It doesn't even interest me. Quite the reverse, quite . . .One wants to see what their troubles are just to prove to oneself that life is idiotic and stupid! So that one won't mind being through with it!! (With dark rage.) Proving that to yourself takes quite a bit of doing, huh? You need evidence, you need a hundred and one instances, and-you-must-be implacable! Because, well, because, my dear sir, there's something-we don't know what he's made of, but it exists--and we all feel it, we feel it like a pain in the throat--it's the hunger for life! A hunger that is never appeased--that never can be appeased--because life--lfe as we live it from moment to moment--is so hungry itself, hungry for itself, we never get to taste it even! The taste of life, the flavor and savor of life, is all in the past, we carry it inside us. Or. rather it's always at a distance from us. We're tied to it only by a slender thread, the rope of memory. Yes, memory ties us to . . . what? that idiocy, these irritations, those silly illusions, mad pursuits like . . . yes . . . What today is idiocy, what today is an irritation, even what today is a misfortune, a grave misfortune, look! Four years pass, five years, ten, and who knows what savor or flavor it will have, what tears will be shed over it, how-it-will-taste! Life, lifel You only have to think of giving it up--especially if it's a matter of days--(At this point the head of THE WOMAN IN BLACK is seen at the corner.) Look! See that? At the corner! See that woman, that shadow of a woman? She's hiding now.
CUSTOMER: What? Who was it?
MAN: You didn't see? She's hiding now.
CUSTOMER.A woman?
MAN: My wife.
CUSTOMER: Ahl Your wife? (Pause.)
MAN: She keeps an eye on me. Oh, sometimes I could just go over and kick her! It wouldn't do any good, though. She's as stubborn as a lost dog: the more you kick it, the closer it sticks to you. (Pause.) What that woman is suffering on my account you could not imagine. She doesn't eat. Doesn't sleep any more. Just follows me around. Night and day. At a distance. She might brush her clothes once in a while--and that old shoe of a hat. She isn't a woman any more. Just--a rag doll. Her hair's going gray, yes, the white dust has settled on her temples forever, and she's only thirty-four. (Pause.) She annoys me. You wouldn't believe how much she annoys me. Sometimes I grab hold of her and shake her. "You're an idiot!" I shout. She takes it. She stands there looking at me. Oh, that look! It makes my fingers itch. I feel like strangling her! Nothing happens, of course. She just waiti till i'm a short way off. Then she starts following me again. (THE WOMAN IN BLACK again sticks her head out.) Look! There's her head again!
CUSTOMER: Poor woman!
MAN: Poor woman? You know what she wants? She wants me to stay and take it easy at home--all cozy and quiet--and let her be nice to me, look after me, show me wifely tenderness ... Home! The rooms in perfect order, the furniture elegant and neat, silence reigns . . . It used to, anyway. Silence--measured by the tick-tocking of the dining-room clock! (Pause.) That's what she wants! I just want you to see the absurdity of it! Isn't it absurd? It's worse: it's cruel, it's macabre! Don't you see? Think of Messina. Or Avezzano. Suppose they knew an earthquake was coming. Do you think those cities could just sit? You think they could just sit calmly in the moonlight waiting for it? Carefully preserving the lovely lines of their streets and the spaciousness of their piazzas? Not daring to deviate one inch from the plans of the City Planning Commission? You're crazy. Those cities would drop everything and take to their heels! Every house, every stone, would take to its heels! (Wheeling on the CUSTOMER.) You agree?
CUSTOMFR (frightened): Well . . .
MAN: Well, just suppose the people knew? The citizens of Avezzano and Messina. Would they calmly get undressed and go to bed? Fold their clothes and put their shoes outside the door? Creep down under the bedclothes and enjoy the nice clean feeling of freshly laundered sheets? Knowing that--in a few hours--they would be dead?--You think they might?
CUSTOMER: Maybe your wife
MAN: Let me finish. (Starting over.) If death, my dear sir, if death were some strange, filthy insect that just . . . settled on you, as it were, took you unawares, shall we say . . . You're walking along. All of a sudden a passerby stops you, and, with finger and thumb cautiously extended, says: "Excuse me, sir, excuse me, honored sir, but death has settled on you!" And with finger and thumb cautiously extended, he takes it and throws it in the gutter. Wouldn't that be wonderful? But death is not an insect. It has settled on many walkers in the city--however far away their thoughts may be, however carefree they may feel. They don't see it. They're thinking what they'll be doing tomorrow. But I(He gets up.) ... Look, my dear sir, come here (He gets the CUSTOMER up and takes him under the lighted lamp.) under the lamp. Come over here. I'll show you something. Look! Under this side of my mustache. See that little knob? Royal purple? Know what they call it? It has such a poetic name. It suggests something soft and sweet. Like a caramel. Epithelioma. (The "o" is stressed.) Try it, isn't it soft and sweet? Epithelioma. Understand? Death passed my way. He stuck this . . . flower in my mouth and said: "Keep it, old chap. I'll stop by again in eight months--or maybe ten." (Pause.) Now tell me. You tell me. Can I just sit quietly sit home as that unhappy girl wishes me to-with this flower in my mouth? (Pause.) I yell at her. "So you want me to kiss you, do you?" "Yes, yes, kiss me!" You know what she did? A couple of weeks ago she took a pin and cut herself--here-on the lip--then she took hold of my head and tried to kiss me, tried to kiss me on the mouth. She said she wanted to die with me. (Pause.) She's insane. (Angrily.) I'm not home! Ever! What I want is to stand at store windows admiring the virtuosity of salesmen! Because, you see, if ever, for one second, I am not occupied, if ever I'm empty know what I mean?--why, I might take a life and think nothing of it, I might destroy the life in someone. . . . someone I don't even know, I'd take I gun and kill someone--like you maybe--someone who's missed his train. (He laughs.) Of course, I'm only joking. (Pause.) I'll go now. (Pause.) lt'd be myself I'd kill. (Pause.) At this time of year, there's a certain kind of apricot, it's good ... How do you eat them? Skin and all? You cut them In exact halves, you take hold with finger and thumb, lengthwise, like this . . . then! (He swallows.) How succulent! Pure delightl Like a woman's lips! (He laughs. Pause.) I wish to send my best wishes to your good lady and her daughters in your country home. (Pause.) I imagine them ... I imagine them dressed in white and light blue in the middle of a lovely green meadow under the shade of ... (Pause.) Will, you do me a favor when you arrive, tomorrow morning? As I figure it, your village is a certain distance from the station. It is dawn. You will be on foot The first tuft of grass you see by the roadside--count the number of blades, will you? Just count the blades of grass. The number, the number of days I have to live. (Pause.) One last request: pick a big tuft! (He laughs.) Then: Good night!
He walks away humming through closed lips the tune whicb the mandolin is playing in the distance. He is approaching the corner on the right. But at a certain point--remembering his wife--he turns and sneaks off in the opposite directiom The CUSTOMER follows with his eyes--more or less dwnbfounded.
CURTAIN