by Susan Sontag
Am I frightening you.
YOUNG MAN
You are cracked.
(ALICE walks across room, turns up a lamp.)
If you call someone I’ll ’ave to stop you.
ALICE
But I’m not afraid of you. I can’t help it. It’s like that.
(She walks toward him.)
YOUNG MAN
Don’t you come near me.
ALICE
Don’t be afraid of me. Why don’t you do what you came to do.
YOUNG MAN
This ain’t how it’s suppose to be.
ALICE
I suppose it is very frightening.
YOUNG MAN
Out there on yer balcony ‘fore I come in me heart hurt so much, it was kickin’ my chest, inside, kickin’ hard, an’ I felt dizzy an’ my mouth was full of puke an’ my pants full of piss an’ then my foot touched the window an’ I said, sh, sh, sh, to myself, easy Tommy-Tom, shhhhhhh, an’ then I took a swig, I brung a flask to keep up my spirits, an’ I opened the door with my jemmy ever so soft an’ easy an’ you was sleeping, you was snoring a little—
ALICE
Oh.
YOUNG MAN
Nah, it was nothin’, you should hear how my ma snores. An’ then you spoiled everything an’ woke up.
ALICE
What’s in the flask.
YOUNG MAN
(Laughs) Gin, what else. Ya think it was tea.
ALICE
May I have some.
YOUNG MAN
Sure, why not, why not, what else crazy thing d’ya want.
(Produces flask from inside jacket, offers it to ALICE. She takes it, drinks.)
Give it back.
ALICE
In a minute. Does your mother call you Tommy-Tom.
YOUNG MAN
How do y’know that.
ALICE
Do you have many sisters and brothers.
(Drinks more.)
YOUNG MAN
My ma birthed seventeen but some is dead. We’re just eleven left. I’m goin’. (Pointing to flask) Give it back now.
ALICE
And now you can’t go through with it.
YOUNG MAN
I didn’t come ‘ere to talk. This ain’t no talkin’ job. ’Ere don’t drink it all.
ALICE
You’re quitting. You can’t do it now.
YOUNG MAN
I didn’t say that. Yer puttin’ words in my mouth. I didn’t say that.
ALICE
Am I stopping you. Is anything I’m doing stopping you.
(He hesitates, glaring at her. For a moment it seems as if he might strike ALICE. Then he turns away.)
Get on with it, young man.
(Muttering under his breath, YOUNG MAN resumes his burglary. He empties out a drawer with jewelry, puts it in the carpetbag; takes shawls, figurines, a small painting, puts them out on the balcony, pausing occasionally to look at ALICE—who watches, leaning against the piano, imperturbable, taking a swig now and then from the flask.)
Surely you’re not expecting me to pitch in and help.
(YOUNG MAN hesitates.)
Take that too.
(Points to vase of flowers.)
YOUNG MAN
It ain’t worth much.
ALICE
It is to me.
YOUNG MAN
D’ya ’ave any money.
ALICE
No money, no teaspoons.
YOUNG MAN
I didn’t ask ya for teaspoons. What’s this.
(Holds up case.)
ALICE
A gold pencil case.
YOUNG MAN
Imagine ‘aving gold for yer pencils.
(Puts it in his bag.)
Are ya just goin’ to stand there an’ watch me.
ALICE
I’ve emptied your flask. It certainly has helped keep my spirits up.
YOUNG MAN
Well I can’t do this with you so close. Who d’ya think I am.
(ALICE walks slowly back to bed.)
Under the covers.
ALICE
I can’t.
YOUNG MAN
You ’ave to.
ALICE
You don’t seem to appreciate that I’m out of bed.
YOUNG MAN
Appreciate! Lord, is this somethin’ to appreciate.
ALICE
I don’t want to be in bed. You are an intruder. I can’t be in bed with a stranger here.
YOUNG MAN
You ’ave to. Get in.
ALICE
You could take the bed. (Laughs) Take it.
YOUNG MAN
I don’t want yer smelly bed. Get in the bed. Cracked!
ALICE
I’m sure I wouldn’t want your bed either. I used to have a wooden bed and curtains around it, but according to the newer theory, it is wood, even more than stale bedding and the enclosing curtains, that is to blame for the appearance of bedbugs. That is why I now have a brass bed.
YOUNG MAN
Only the rich don’t’ave bedbugs. Don’t give me that about wood.
ALICE
I didn’t mean all wooden beds. Bitter wood, imported from Jamaica, is believed to be unsavory to bugs.
YOUNG MAN
Get in bed.
ALICE
I’ll walk up and down and ignore you.
(YOUNG MAN looks again in one of the drawers, pulls the gilt mirror out, holds it up.)
If you take that I’ll bless you.
YOUNG MAN
But it’s nothin’. Wood!
(Puts sack and bag of tools on balcony.)
ALICE
Sometimes I have such odd thoughts. My mind makes me feel strong. Makes me master. But I don’t throw myself on anything. I just stay in my lair. Sometimes feeling—
YOUNG MAN
(Returning from balcony) At least sit down.
ALICE
No.
YOUNG MAN
I’m leavin’.
ALICE
I’m not very entertaining am I.
YOUNG MAN
That tall woman’ll come back.
ALICE
No she won’t.
YOUNG MAN
There’s too much light.
(He turns down one of the two lamps.)
ALICE
I see terrible thoughts when I close my eyes. But when I die I won’t see them.
(YOUNG MAN, who has been packing up the loot, drops cut-glass Jubilee dish; it breaks.)
Oh be careful.
YOUNG MAN
(Jeering, nervous) I thought ya didn’t care about yer possessions. I thought ya thought you was above all that …
ALICE
My detachment.
YOUNG MAN
Rich people!
ALICE
I see big things very small and small things so big. My father’s leg. He’s going to hurt me. This is a temple of tyrannical gentility.
YOUNG MAN
A what.
ALICE
There are so many terrible and engrossing things going on in the world and I’m trapped inside this turbid self that suffers, that closes me in, that makes me small.
YOUNG MAN
You wouldn’t last one day where I come from.
ALICE
Out there it is so big. I keep to my bed. But I ask Nurse to leave the doors to the balcony open and from my bed I hear. It reverberates within me. Once a whole family, or what passes for a family, breaking apart, beneath my window. In the stillness of the night the voice of a woman, hardly human in its sound, saying without pause in a raucous monotone “You’re a loi-er. You’re a loi-er” mingled with the drunken notes of a man and with a feeble gin-suckled wail for chorus—
YOUNG MAN
Hardly human? Hardly human?
ALICE
Mentally no fate appalls me.
YOUNG MAN
Hardly human? An’ what are you. You don’t hav
e to do nothin’ but lie here. What’s so human about that.
ALICE
I express myself badly.
YOUNG MAN
I won’t let ya get at me anymore.
ALICE
I’m old enough to be your mother.
YOUNG MAN
Don’t pull at me.
ALICE
I see we are not to be friends.
YOUNG MAN
Friends! Friends! At the Last Judgment I could be friends with the likes o’ you.
(Piercing whistle from outside. He closes carpetbag.)
My signal. My crow. He must ’ave spotted someone.
(Gathers other gear.)
You didn’t see nothin’. I wasn’t ’ere.
(Stoops; puts on shoes.)
You could still send for the peelers an’ tell ’em what I look like an’ they’d find me. You could do that. You do whatever ya want, don’t you.
ALICE
What I do is mostly not do things. And so I shall. You weren’t here. (Laughs) And this isn’t going to happen again either. You won’t find another mark as eagerly posthumous, as mild, as curious as I.
(YOUNG MAN stands, hesitates.)
YOUNG MAN
I’m sorry.
ALICE
Don’t be sorry.
YOUNG MAN
I ain’t an animal, y’know. I’m a human being just like you.
ALICE
Now you are making me sad.
YOUNG MAN
I’m sorry yer not a well person an’ I hope ya get better, that’s what I wanted to say.
(Whistle sound.)
That’s ’im, me pal.
ALICE
Crow.
(YOUNG MAN opens French doors.)
I still think you could do something better with your time, your youth, with your horrid energies, with your—
(Doors slam shut: he is gone.)
Out there it’s so big.
(ALICE walks to doors, draws curtains. Blackout.)
SCENE 8
ALICE’s bedroom. Stripped, except for bed, wheelchair in the corner, piano. Tall stack of mattresses at rear of stage, by curtainless doors to balcony. ALICE lying on top of the bed in street clothes (or covered with a paisley shawl). NURSE at the piano: scales. Sunset light.
ALICE
I did get up.
NURSE
That’s very important.
ALICE
Don’t speak to me as if I were a child. You mean unimportant.
NURSE
Unimportant I mean.
ALICE
Important—unimportant—unimportant—important.
NURSE
You did get up.
(She switches from scales to a fragment of the Parsifal theme, then back to scales.)
ALICE
Turning up the lights to get rid of those frightening shadows.
NURSE
You did get up.
ALICE
Even if I am grown up—
NURSE
Even if you don’t get up again.
(NURSE stands.)
ALICE
I should like to be a little larger. That doesn’t seem much to ask. Stay with me.
NURSE
I will.
(She sits in wheelchair near bed.)
ALICE
You can read me a story, I’ll tell you one.
NURSE
I will.
ALICE
Without the unhappy ending. We won’t tell.
NURSE
I will.
ALICE
I used to be a real person or different. I tried. I feel as if I fell.
NURSE
I’ll catch you.
ALICE
Let me fall asleep. Let me wake up. Let me fall asleep.
NURSE
You will.
(Room becomes brighter and brighter. Quick blackout.)
CURTAIN
By Susan Sontag
Fiction
THE BENEFACTOR
DEATH KIT
I, ETCETERA
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
THE VOLCANO LOVER
Essays
AGAINST INTERPRETATION
STYLES OF RADICAL WILL
ON PHOTOGRAPHY
ILLNESS AS METAPHOR
UNDER THE SIGN OF SATURN
AIDS AND ITS METAPHORS
Filmscripts
DUET FOR CANNIBALS
BROTHER CARL
Play
ALICE IN BED
A SUSAN SONTAG READER
Notes
1 Written for the German translation of Alice in Bed, which had its premiere in Bonn, at the Schauspiel, in September 1991.
Copyright © 1993 by Susan Sontag
All rights reserved
First edition, 1993
Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollinsCanadaLtd
Designed by Cynthia Krupat
eISBN 9781466818729
First eBook Edition : April 2012
Library of Congress catalog card number: 93-71280