The Dwarfs

by Harold Pinter

  - I see.

  - One, you see, Len said, standing, purely technical point about Bach is his insistence and his flowering justification of that insistence. Bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu b bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu bu……….bu tillellellellellalalalalala bu bu bu etcetera. You can come in on the tillellella, but you can easily fit in the previous bu bus. No trouble. That’s all I’ve got to say about Bach. There you are. You shouldn’t have asked me.

  - Well, said Pete. Ah. Yes, you’ve told me something. They stood with their hands in their pockets, on the carpet.

  - What about a cup of cocoa?

  - Cocoa?

  - Yes, Pete said, we’ll drink a toast.

  - All right. All right, I don’t mind doing that.

  They left the room and walked down to the scullery, the cat following. Through the basement window, the moon shone crooked on the hanging crockery. Len switched on the light and put the kettle on. He brought out a tin of cocoa.

  - Yes, you’ve got something there.

  - It’s not possible.

  - My face is a death’s head, Pete said, looking into the flaked mirror above the sink.

  - You’re quite right.

  - Do you know, a neighbour stopped me the other day and told me I was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.

  - What did you say to that?

  - What could I say?

  - I’ve got a few bagels, Len said.

  Pete sat at the table and stroked its surface.

  - This is a very solid table.

  - I said I’ve got some bagels.

  - No thanks. How long have you had this table?

  - It’s a family heirloom.

  - Yes, said Pete, leaning back, 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.

  - Who’d be steering?

  - You could park it. Park it. There’s not a soul in sight.

  - Where would you go?

  - Go? Pete said. You wouldn’t go.

  - Here’s your cocoa.

  They sipped.

  - How’s Mark?

  - Fine, Len shrugged.

  - What does he have to say for himself?

  - He said he wouldn’t spit last night.

  - I’m glad to hear it.

  - I’m glad to be able to say it.

  - What’s he got to spit about?

  - Well, he likes a good spit sometimes.

  - Yes, but what’s he spitting, or not spitting, about, this time? Pete asked.

  - My examiner.

  - Who?

  - Christ. Jesus Christ.

  - What, Pete said, sitting up, is he thinking of having a gob at Jesus Christ?

  - Not exactly. But he can’t help it now and again, I suppose.

  - What are you gabbling about?

  - Well, Len said, you told him yourself I was having a look at the New Testament.

  - Oh. So he’s spitting at that, eh?

  - I told you, he said he wouldn’t.

  - That’s very generous of him.

  - Well, he may be in a position to. You can never tell.

  Pete dug his hands in his pockets and laughed.

  - You’re talking like Joe Doakes. In a position to spit at Jesus Christ? I’ll split a gut in a minute. But go on, I’m interested. Tell me. Why do you think he’s in a position to spit?

  - You’re tearing my fingernails off, one by one.

  - I’m letting you off lightly. Come on.

  - All right. I think he has one answer, that’s all. Even if he hasn’t, I think I think he has, and even if I don’t think he has he may have or, if you like, someone with his name may have.

  - Someone with his name may have! You’ve made the cat crawl under the table. Is this how you talk to the cat every night?

  - All right, Len said. You’ve got something to say. Why don’t you say it?

  - No, Pete said.

  He picked up his cup and gulped.

  - No, he smiled. I’ve got nothing to say.

  - Really? Len frowned .

  He looked up and shook his head and then, reflecting, began to chuckle.

  - All right. He said something else though, that I’m sure you’ll appreciate.

  - What’s that?

  - He was talking about Dean Swift, you see, and he said he ended up eating his own shit and left his money to lunatic asylums. Have you seen Pete lately? Just like that. Straight off. What do you think of that?

  Pete sat forward and laughed.

  - That’s very amusing.

  - Amusing! I should say it is.

  - Yes, very odd.

  - Odd? What do you mean, odd?

  - When I got home from work the other day, Pete said, a neighbour was at the door. Smoke was coming through the window.

  - What?

  - It was all right. It was a cake I’d forgotten about, in the oven. The place was intact, but the cake was just about ready for your cat. The neighbour, though, was in a state, white in the face. Obviously thought I’d been boiling human bones.

  - Yes, I can see that, Len nodded.

  - You can?

  - Oh yes, I can see that all right.

  The tap dripped. Len turned it tight.

  - Well, how are you, Len? Pete said.

  - What?

  - How’s things?

  - Huh, Len said, and kicked a chair. I’m supper for the crows.

  - Who is?

  - I’ll tell you, Len said, and straddled the chair. I’m a non-participator.

  - Go home. You? You’re just a Charley Hunt.

  - That too.

  - I’ll tell you what your trouble is, Pete said. You need to be more elastic.

  - Elastic? Elastic. You’re quite right. Elastic. What are you talking about?

  - How are you getting on with Christ?

  - Christ? No, no. No. He’s what he is and I’m what I’m not. I don’t see how we can be related.

  - Giving up the ghost, Pete said, lighting a cigarette, 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, if you go on like this. You want to cut out this terror and pity lark. It’s bullshit. Common-sense can work wonders. The first thing you’ve got to do is kill that cat. It’s leading you nowhere.

  Len stood up and wiped his glasses. He looked down, shivering.

  - No, he said. There is a different sky each time I look. The clouds run about in my eye. I can’t do it.

  - The apprehension of experience, Pete said, must obviously be dependent upon discrimination if it is to be considered valuable. That’s what you lack. 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?

  - Look, Len said, I could never give up Bach.

  - Who asked you to do that?

  - No? Oh. Oh, I see. I misunderstood you.

  - What?

  - You didn’t ask me to give up Bach?

  - What are you talking about?

  - It must have been somebody else.

  Len cleared the cups and put them in the sink.

  - I wonder what Mark’s up to.

  - Saying sweet syllables into some lady’s earhole, Pete smiled. Don’t you think?

  - Probably.

  - Yes, Pete said, he’s a strange chap, is Mark. I sometimes think he’s a man of weeds.

  Balancing the chair under his body, he put his legs up on the table.

  - Yes, he said, I sometimes think he’s a man of weeds. And yet I don’t know. Fie surprises me, that bloke, now and a
gain, for the good, I mean. But often I wonder about him. I sometimes think he makes capital out of the mud on his shoes, that he’s just playing a game. But what game?

  Len turned the tap and rinsed a saucer.

  - I wonder, Pete said, now and again, why I bother. He’s got, after all, a conceit enough to hid an army in. And what’s there to back it up? There’s the point. Eh?

  Len rinsed a cup and did not answer.

  - An attitude. But has it substance or is it barren? Sometimes I think it is barren, as barren as a bombed site. But I won’t be dogmatic on it.

  - No, Len said, wiping; the cups.

  - He’s an elusive customer. Of course, I like him, when it comes down to it. You can forgive a lot. But he’s never done a day’s work in his life, that’s his trouble. He’s a bit of a ponce, he wouldn’t deny it. But I think he overdoes the lechery. Between you and me, he’ll be a spent force in no time if he doesn’t watch his step.

  - Pss! Pss! Len hissed.

  The cat slid out from under the table. Len, warding it off, poured milk into a saucer and stood up. The cat lapped.

  - What do you call that cat?

  - Solomon, said Len.

  He leaned against the sideboard and poked at the corner of his eye, under his glasses.

  - Here, Pete said, I’ll tell you a dream I had last night, if you like, to cheer you up.

  - All right.

  - I didn’t expect to dream last night.

  - What was it?

  - It was very straightforward, Pete said. I was with Virginia 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 firebell clanging. When I looked at Ginny, 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 catsmeat. 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. She just stood there, with half a face, staring at me. I screamed at her to come away, but she still wouldn’t move. Then I suddenly thought - Christ, what’s my face like? Is that what she’s staring at? Is that rotting too?

  Len gasped.

  - One for the black book, eh? Pete said.

  Len covered his eyes with his hands.

  - Doesn’t matter about that, Pete said. Watch this. See how many I can do.

  - What?

  - Keep a count.

  Pete lay stomach down on the floor and began to propel himself up and down, on his forearms. Len leaned forward, watching him.

  - How many? Pete grunted.

  - Fifteen.

  Pete continued, staring in front of him.

  - Twenty.

  - Uh.

  - Twenty-five.

  - Uh.

  - Twenty-nine.

  - Enough.

  He relaxed and grinned, sitting on the floor.

  - Not bad, eh?

  - What are you made of? Len said. It’s beyond me.

  - Give me a week and I’ll do thirty-five.

  Seven

  The dwarfs are back on the job, Len said. They’re keeping an eye on proceedings. They clock in very early, scenting the event. They are like kites in a city disguise; they only work in cities. However, they are certainly skilled labourers and their trade is not without risk. They wait for a smoke signal and unpack their kit. They are on the spot with no time wasted and circle the danger area. There, they take up positions, which they are able to change at a moment’s notice, if necessary. But they don’t stop work until the job in hand is ended, one way or another.

  I have not been able to pay a subscription, but they have consented to take me into their gang, on a short term basis. My stay with them cannot be long. I can’t see this particular assignment lasting into the winter. The game will be up by then. At present, however, this is the only way I myself can keep an eye on proceedings. And it is essential that I keep a close watch on the rate of exchange, on the rise and fall of the market. Probably neither Pete nor Mark is aware of the effect the state of his exchange has upon my market. But it is so.

  And so I shall keep the dwarfs company and watch with them. They miss very little. With due warning from them I shall be able to clear my stocks, should there be a landslide.

  Eight

  At Pete’s request she sat down. He had something to say, he explained, to which she would do well to listen, since it might prove fruitful. Standing on the hearth to begin, he invited her to consider the question of physical appearance and to what degree it was relevant. His own concern was with where the body ceased to be a positive force and became a liability. For example, there was himself and Mark. He would venture to say that their physical appearances went before them and established a contact before their personalities were inclined to participate. To the undiscerning, that might serve as a pointer to what was to come, but how far was that pointer accurate? He himself was a pretty boy, Mark looked as though he had just got out of, or was just getting into, bed. Both their appearances were, he hoped, inconsistent with the facts of the matter. It was, indeed, one of their few mutual problems. They were both obliged to come to some sort of working arrangement with their form in the flesh, and the course they took to resolve the question could be decisive. It seemed to him that Mark was quite content to conform to his body’s disposition. He was satisfied to accept a worship based on those grounds alone. But he surely had more to offer than his profile and his abilities as a sexual mechanic. He was letting his potentialities slip. Acting in such complacent liaison with his body’s whims, he could not hope to preserve any objective or critical point of view, either in relation to himself or to others. For a distance had always to be kept between what was smelt and your ability to weigh in the balance the located matter or event. Mark was not only failing in this but was a closed book to all emendation. He was not open to criticism.

  She listened.

  Len, of course, was not so much a physical type as a physical symptom. His behaviour, his manner of expression, were informed by something in the nature of a central and compulsive stammer. He was never still, or when he was, his stillness was both a gesture and an argument. But it was never his features themselves that were to the fore, it was what came after them; the smokescreens, the distress signals of his nature. He was encountered on that territory only and to comment on his physical make-up was irrelevant, for his body, as such, simply, did not participate. The constant activity one noted when in his company obtained only at the nerve ends and limits of his body, and to objects attached to it; his hands and his glasses. His eyes were active only as nerve ends, they could not be regarded as features. And where this nervous territory normally constituted a part of the sum, in Len’s case it was the sum. It preceded his body, which was by way of being merely a conveyance for the box of tricks and conundrums he was.

  She lay back.

  In point of fact, Len preserved no more of a distance between what he smelt and what he thought about it than Mark, but for different reasons. They both failed to distinguish between any given smell and the conclusion consequent upon it, but where Mark was simply too lazy to attempt to differentiate, Len was too lacking in trust in his own discernment. He must stick to the smell and equate it with the thought, till the thought was the smell, because he was unable to face up to the true nature of thought and its demands. But while Mark was not open to correction, though he might in time discover his errors or be brought to appreciate them by example, Len was open both to instruction and to assistance.

  She lay back, listening.

  This, he went on, he was prepared to give, and more, to either of them. For upon consideration, taking all differences into account, he knew their friendship as valuable. In fact he was not sure whether they might not be said to constitute a church, of a kind. They were hardly one in dogma or direction, but there was common ground and there was a framework. At their best they form
ed a unit, and a unit which, in his terms, was entitled to be called a church; an alliance of the three of them for the common good, and a faith in that alliance. It was, of course, a matter of working towards a balanced and flexible structure. He was well aware this structure was nowhere near completion. Their differences were conducive to corruption within the unit. Labour was needed to contain them, but if they were contained or, what was more productive, brought to an honest reconcilement, then they would be able to speak of achievement. For him the effort was worthwhile. It was more than worthwhile, it was quite frankly, essential. It was the simple matter of communication. If he remained unable to communicate with his fellowman there was nothing left but dryrot.

  She listened.

  Having admitted the possibility of corruption within the unit, he would deal with the question of corruption from outside it. An outside influence, he was convinced, could be absorbed without harm. For instance, Virginia was acting upon one of them at that moment; himself. On the assumption that she did him positive good, he himself would have more to offer the church. If, on the other hand, she were doing him positive harm, he took it the others would fulfil their obligations towards him, by way of understanding. A case, of course, could be made for an outside influence acting, say, on Len in one way, and on Mark in another, so as to cause dissension between them and corrupt the fabric. But in that event it would be simply a matter of choice. They would have to consider which was of more value; the subject of their quarrel, or their alliance. In such a case, either the church would profit or they could all pack up and go home.

  The day becoming twilight, she eased herself in the chair, the room’s shades meeting, till now, words again, about her, from the bed, where he squatted, smoking.

  The empty and the quack, he had had his fill of them. His way of life had forced a crisis. His time spent, for instance, in the Church of England, had been a waste and a delusion. It had been nothing but intellectual dishwashing, where he had deceived himself he was putting in spadework as a positive visionary. It had served only as a degradation of his powers. His potentialities were wearing thin, becoming stagnant, out of nothing but disaffection at continually remaining potential. Beyond his own resources, he would be frank, he had little. The time was to do. He was, however, condemned to a course, of that let there be no doubt. He must work his disease to the bone and so cure it. His condition could be destroyed only by fulfilling it, to that he was reconciled. But to remain a part of the Church of England required a kind of patience he no longer possessed. They were too far drowned in inanities. For instance, their idea of the nature of God was an impertinence. All they were in fact doing was patting themselves on the back. As for God, they had given him his hat and told him to wait. They looked upon him as their creation; a commodity. They were directing the firm and all he had to do was run the errands. God did the donkeywork; they reaped the profits. At the last meeting he had attended he had declared: Where is this God of yours? Put him down here on the table and let’s have a look at him. Let’s all have a butcher’s. They thought a bomb had burst. In reality, they were the kind of people, who, if the gates of heaven opened to them, all they would feel would be a draught.