The line ends in self-contempt and anger. And suddenly, extremely fast, a woman appears in World War I costume—a Gibson Girl hat and veil over her face, ankle-length cloak, and in her hand a toy sailboat. She is bent over, as though offering the boat to a little boy, and her voice is like a whisper, distant, obscure. Father enters, calling, followed by Dan.
MOTHER: Quentin? Look what we brought you from Atlantic City—from the boardwalk!
The boy evidently runs away; Mother instantly is anxious and angering and rushes to a point and halts, as though calling through a closed door.
Don’t lock this door! But darling, we didn’t trick you, we took Dan because he’s older and I wanted a rest! But Fanny told you we were coming back, didn’t she? Why are you running that water? Quentin, stop that water! Ike, come quick! Break down the door! Break down the door! She has rushed off into darkness.
But a strange anger is on his face, and he has started after her. And to the Listener . . .
QUENTIN: They sent me out for a walk with the maid. When I came back the house was empty. God, why is betrayal the only truth that sticks? I adored that woman. It’s monstrous I can’t mourn her!
The park bench lights. Maggie appears in a heavy white man’s sweater, a white angora skating cap over a red wig, moccasins, and sun glasses.
MAGGIE, to the empty bench: Hi! It’s me! Maggie!
QUENTIN: Or mourn her either. . . . No, it’s not that I think I killed her. It’s . . .
MAGGIE, to the empty bench: See? I told you nobody recognizes me!
QUENTIN: . . . that I can’t find myself in it. Either the guilt comes or the innocence! But where’s my love or even my crime? And I tell you I saw it once! I saw Quentin here!
MAGGIE: Golly, I fell asleep the minute you left, the other night! You like my wig? See? And moccasins!
Slight pause. Now he smiles, comes beside her on the bench.
QUENTIN: All you need is roller skates.
MAGGIE, clapping her hands with joy: You’re funny!
QUENTIN, half to Listener: I keep forgetting—wholly to her—how beautiful you are. Your eyes make me shiver.
She is silent for a moment, adoring.
MAGGIE: Like to see my new apartment? There’s no elevator even, or a doorman. Nobody would know. If you want to rest before you go to Washington. He doesn’t reply. ’Cause I just found out—I go to Paris after London.
QUENTIN: So . . . how long will you be gone?
MAGGIE: It’s maybe two months, I think. They both arrive at the same awareness—the separation is pain. Tears are in her eyes. Quentin?
QUENTIN: Honey . . . Takes her hand. Don’t look for anything more from me.
MAGGIE: I’m not! But if I went to Washington . . . I could register in the hotel as Miss None.
QUENTIN: N-u-n?
MAGGIE: No—“n-o-n-e”—like nothing. I made it up once ’cause I can never remember a fake name, so I just have to think of nothing and that’s me! She laughs with joy. I’ve done it.
QUENTIN: It is a marvelous thought. The whole government’s hating me, and meanwhile back at the hotel . . .
MAGGIE: That’s what I mean! Just when that committee is knocking on your head you could think of me like naked—
QUENTIN: What a lovely thought!
MAGGIE: And it would make you happy.
QUENTIN, smiling warmly at her: And nervous.
MAGGIE: Because it should all be one one thing, you know? Helping people, and sex. You might even argue better the next day!
QUENTIN, with a new awareness, astonishment: You know? There’s one word written on your forehead.
MAGGIE: What?
QUENTIN: “Now.”
MAGGIE: But what else is there?
QUENTIN: A future. And I’ve been carrying it around all my life, like a vase that must never be dropped. So you can’t ever touch anybody, you see?
MAGGIE: But why can’t you just hold it in one hand?—he laughs—and touch with the other! I would never bother you, Quentin. He looks at his watch, as though beginning to calculate if there might not be time. Maggie, encouraged, glances at his watch. Just make it like when you’re thirsty. And you drink and walk away, that’s all.
QUENTIN: But what about you?
MAGGIE: Well . . . I would have what I gave.
QUENTIN: You’re all love, aren’t you?
MAGGIE: That’s all I am! A person could die any minute, you know. Suddenly: Oh, hey! I’ve got a will! Digging into her pocket, she brings out a folded sheet of notepaper. But is it legal if it’s not typewritten?
QUENTIN, taking it: What do you want with a will? He starts reading the will.
MAGGIE: I’m supposed to be like a millionaire in about two years! And I’ve got to do a lot of flying now.
QUENTIN, looking at her: Who wrote this?
MAGGIE: Jerry Moon. He’s a friend of my agent Andy in the building business, but he knows a lot about law. He signed it there for a witness. I saw him sign it. In my bedroom—
QUENTIN: It leaves everything to the agency.
MAGGIE: I know, but just for temporary, till I can think of somebody to put down.
QUENTIN: Don’t you have anybody at all?
MAGGIE: No!
QUENTIN: What’s all the rush?
MAGGIE: Well, in case Andy’s plane goes down. He’s got five children, see, and his—
QUENTIN: But do you feel responsible for his family?
MAGGIE: Well, no. But he did help me, he loaned me money when I—
QUENTIN: A million dollars?
Two boys enter upstage, carrying baseball gloves.
MAGGIE, with a dawning awareness and fear: Well, not a million . . .
QUENTIN: Who’s your lawyer?
MAGGIE: Well, nobody.
QUENTIN, with a certain unwillingness, even a repugnance about interfering—he sounds neutral: Didn’t anybody suggest you get your own lawyer?
MAGGIE: But if you trust somebody you trust them—don’t you?
Slight pause. A decision seizes him; he takes her hand.
QUENTIN: Come on, I’ll walk you home.
MAGGIE, as she stands with him: Okay! ’Cause what’s good for Andy’s good for me, right?
QUENTIN: I can’t advise you, honey, maybe you get something out of this that I don’t understand. Let’s go.
MAGGIE: No! I’m not involved with Andy. I . . . don’t really sleep around with everybody, Quentin! He starts to take her but she continues.
I was with a lot of men but I never got anything for it. It was like charity, see. My analyst said I gave to those in need. Whereas, I’m not an institution. You believe me?
QUENTIN, wanting her feverishly: I believe you. Come on.
A small gang of boys with baseball equipment obstructs them; one of the first pair points at her.
BOY: It’s Maggie, I told you!
MAGGIE, pulling at Quentin’s arm, defensively, but excited: No, I just look like her, I’m Sarah None!
QUENTIN: Let’s go! He tries to draw her off, but the boys grab her, and she begins accepting pencils and pieces of paper to autograph. Hey!
Crowd: How about an autograph, Maggie! Whyn’t you come down to the club! When’s your next spectacular! Hey, Mag, I got all your records! Sing something! Handing over a paper for her to sign: For my brother, Mag! Take off your sweater, Mag, it’s hot out! How about that dance like you did on TV!—A boy wiggles sensuously.
QUENTIN: That’s enough!
Quentin has been thrust aside; he now reaches in, grabs her, and draws her away as she walks backward, still signing, laughing with them. And into darkness, and the boys gone, and she turns to him.
MAGGIE: I’m sorry!
QUENTIN: It’s like they’re eating you. You like that?
MAGGIE: No, but t
hey’re just people. Could you sit down till the train? All I got so far is this French Provincial. Taking off her sweater: You like it? I picked it out myself. And my bed, and my record player. But it could be a nice apartment, couldn’t it?
In silence Quentin takes her hand; now he draws her to him; now he kisses her.
MAGGIE: I love you, Quentin. I would do anything for you. And I would never bother you, I swear.
QUENTIN: You’re so beautiful it’s hard to look at you.
MAGGIE: You didn’t even see me! Backing away: Why don’t you just stand there and I’ll come out naked! Or isn’t there a later train?
QUENTIN, after a pause: Sure. There’s always a later train. He starts unbuttoning his jacket.
MAGGIE: I’ll put music!
QUENTIN—now he laughs through his words: Yeah, put music! He strives for his moment; to the Listener as he opens his jacket: Here; it was somewhere here! I don’t know, a—a fraud!
A driving jazz comes on.
MAGGIE: Here, let me take off your shoes!
Father, Mother, Dan enter. Maggie drops to his feet, starting to unlace. Stiffly, with a growing horror, he looks down at her. Now shapes move in the darkness.
QUENTIN: Maggie?
MAGGIE, looking up from the floor, leaving off unlacing: Yes?
He looks around in the darkness; and suddenly his father charges forward.
FATHER: What you want! Always what you want! Chrissake, what are you!
Now Louise appears, reading a book, but Dan is standing beside her, almost touching her with his hand.
DAN: This family’s behind you, kid.
And Mother, isolated, moving almost sensuously—and Quentin is pressed, as though by them, away from Maggie.
QUENTIN, roaring out to all of them, his fists angrily in air against them: But where is Quentin?
Mother: Oh, what poetry he brought me, Strauss, and novels to read . . .
QUENTIN, going toward Mother in her longing: Yes, yes! But I know that treason! And the terror of complicity in that desire; yes, and not to be unworthy of these loyal, failing men! But where is Quentin? Instead of taking off my clothes, this—posture! Maggie—
MAGGIE: Okay. Maybe when I get back . . .
QUENTIN: You . . . have to tear up that will. To Listener: Can’t even go to bed without a principle! But how can you speak of love, she was chewed and spat out by a long line of grinning men! Her name floating in the stench of locker rooms and parlor-car cigar smoke! She had the truth that day, I brought the lie that she had to be “saved”! From what? Except my own contempt!
MAGGIE, to the empty space where Quentin was: But even my analyst said it was okay. ’Cause a person like me has to have somebody.
QUENTIN: Maggie—honest men don’t draw wills like that.
MAGGIE: But it’s just for temporary—
QUENTIN: Darling, if I went to Andy, and this adviser, and the analyst too, perhaps—I think they’d offer me a piece, to shut up. They’ve got you on a table, honey, and they’re carving you—
MAGGIE: But . . . I can’t spend all that money anyway! I can’t even think over twenty-five dollars!
QUENTIN: It’s not the money they take, it’s the dignity they destroy. You’re not a piece of meat; you seem to think you owe people whatever they demand!
MAGGIE: I know. She lowers her head with a cry, trembling with hope and shame.
QUENTIN, tilting up her face: But Maggie, you’re somebody! You’re not a kid any more, running around looking for a place to sleep! It’s not only your success or that you’re rich—you’re straight, you’re serious, you’re first-class, people mean something to you; you don’t have to go begging shady people for advice like some—some tramp! With a sob of love and desperation she slides to the floor and grasps his thighs, kissing his trousers. He watches, then suddenly lifts her, and with immense pity and hope: Maggie, stand up!
The music flies in now, and she smiles strangely through her tears, and with a kind of statement of her persisting nature begins unbuttoning her blouse. Maggie’s body writhes to the beat within her clothing. And as soon as she starts her dance, his head shakes—and to the Listener . . .
No, not love; to stop impersonating, that’s all! To live—Groping—to live in good faith if only with my guts! To— To Dan and Father: Yes! To be “good” no more! Disguised no more! To Mother: Afraid no more to show what Quentin, Quentin, Quentin—is!
LOUISE: You haven’t even the decency to . . .
A high tribunal appears, and a flag; a chairman bangs his gavel once; he is flanked by others looking down on Quentin from on high.
QUENTIN: That decency is murderous! Speak truth, not decency. I curse the whole high administration of fake innocence! To the chairman: I declare it, I am not innocent!—nor good!
Chairman: But surely Reverend Barnes cannot object to answering whether he attended the Communist-run Peace Congress in Prague, Czechoslovakia. No—no, counsel will not be allowed to confer with the witness, this is not a trial! Any innocent man would be—
QUENTIN: And this question—innocent! How many Negroes you allow to vote in your patriotic district? And which of your social, political, or racial sentiments would Hitler have disapproved? And not a trial? You fraud, your “investigators” this moment are working in this man’s church to hound him out of it!
Harley BARNES, rising to his feet, wearing a clerical collar: I decline on the grounds of the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.
QUENTIN, with intense sorrow: But are we sure, Harley—I ask it, I ask it—if the tables were turned, and they were in front of you, would you permit them not to answer? Hateful men that they are? Harley looks at him indignantly, suspiciously. I am not sure what we are upholding any more—are we good by merely saying no to evil? Even in a righteous “no” there’s some disguise. Isn’t it necessary—to say—Harley is gone, and the tribunal; Maggie is there, snapping her fingers, letting down her hair—to finally say yes—to something? Turning toward Maggie, who lies down on the bed: Yes, yes, yes.
MAGGIE: Say anything to me.
QUENTIN, looking down at her: A fact . . . a fact . . . a fact, a thing.
MAGGIE: Sing inside me.
Quentin crosses to Listener.
QUENTIN: Even condemned, unspeakable like all truth!
MAGGIE: Become happy.
QUENTIN: Contemptible like all truth.
MAGGIE: That’s all I am.
QUENTIN: Covered like truth with slime: blind, ignorant.
MAGGIE: But nobody ever said to me, stand up!
QUENTIN: The blood’s fact, the world’s blind gut—yes!
MAGGIE: Now.
QUENTIN, sitting before the listener, his back to Maggie: To this, yes.
MAGGIE: Now . . . Now. Pause. Quentin? She rises off the bed, drawing the blanket around her, and in a languid voice addresses a point upstage. Quenny? That soap is odorless, so you don’t have to worry. Slight pause. It’s okay! Don’t rush; I love to wait for you! She glances down at the floor. I love your shoes. You have good taste! She moves upstage. ’Scuse me I didn’t have anything for you to eat, but I didn’t know! I’ll get eggs, though, case maybe in the mornings. And steaks—case at night. I mean just in case. You could have it just the way you want, just any time. She turns, looking front. Like me?
Holga appears above, in the airport, looking about for him.
QUENTIN, to the Listener, his back to Maggie: It’s all true, but it isn’t the truth. I know it because it all comes back so cheap; I loved that girl. My bitterness is making me lie. I’m afraid. To make a promise. Glancing up at Holga: Because I don’t know who’ll be making it. I’m a stranger to my life.
MAGGIE—she has lifted a “tie” off the floor: Oh, your tie got all wrinkled! I’m sorry! But hey, I have a tie! It’s beautiful, a regular man’s tie. Catching he
rself: I . . . just happen to have it! She laughs it off and goes into darkness. Holga is gone.
QUENTIN: I tell you, below this fog of tawdriness and vanity, there is a law in this disaster, and I saw it as hard and clear as a statute. But I think I saw it . . . with some love. Or can one ever remember love? It’s like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume. And that’s the truth of roses, isn’t it—the perfume?
On the second platform Maggie appears in light in a wedding dress; Carrie, a Negro maid, is just placing a veiled hat on her head; Lucas, a designer, is on his knees, hurriedly fixing the last hem, as before. Maggie is turning herself, wide-eyed, in an unseen mirror. Quentin begins to rise.
MAGGIE: Hurry, Lucas, the ceremony is for three! Hurry, please! Lucas sews faster.
QUENTIN, to Listener: I want to see her with . . . that love again! Why is it so hard? Standing there, that wishing girl, that victory in lace.
MAGGIE, looking ahead on the edge of life as Lucas bites off the last threads: You won’t hardly know me any more, Lucas! He saved me, I mean it! I’ve got a new will and I even changed my analyst—I’ve got a wonderful doctor now! And we’re going to do all my contracts over, which I never got properly paid. And Ludwig Reiner’s taking me! And he won’t take even opera singers unless they’re, you know, like artists! No matter how much you want to pay him. I didn’t even dare, but Quentin made me go—and now he took me, Ludwig Reiner, imagine!
Now she turns, seeing Quentin entering. An awe of the moment takes them both; Lucas goes. Carrie lightly touches Maggie’s forehead and silently prays.
QUENTIN: Oh, my darling. How perfect you are.
MAGGIE, descending toward him: Like me?
Clergyman and woman guest enter on second platform.
QUENTIN: Good God! To come home every night—to you!
He starts for her, open-armed, laughing, but she touches his chest, excited and strangely fearful.
MAGGIE: You still don’t have to do it, Quentin. I could just come to you whenever you want.
QUENTIN: You just can’t believe in something good really happening. But it’s real, darling, you’re my wife!
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 63