ESTHER: Well, maybe you’ll get married again.
WALTER: I doubt that very much, Esther.—I often feel I never should have.
ESTHER, scoffing: Why!
WALTER: Seriously. I’m in a strange business, you know. There’s too much to learn and far too little time to learn it. And there’s a price you have to pay for that. I tried awfully hard to kid myself but there’s simply no time for people. Not the way a woman expects, if she’s any kind of woman. He laughs. But I’m doing pretty well alone!
VICTOR: How would I list an amount like that on my income tax?
WALTER: Well . . . call it a gift.
Victor is silent, obviously in conflict. Walter sees the emotion.
Not that it is, but you could list it as such. It’s allowed.
VICTOR: I see. I was just curious how it—
WALTER: Just enter it as a gift. There’s no problem.
With the first sting of a vague resentment, Walter turns his eyes away. Esther raises her eyebrows, staring at the floor. Walter lifts the foil off the table—clearly changing the subject.
You still fence?
VICTOR, almost gratefully pursuing this diversion: No, you got to join a club and all that. And I work weekends often. I just found it here.
WALTER, as though to warm the mood: Mother used to love to watch him do this.
ESTHER, surprised, pleased: Really?
WALTER: Sure, she used to come to all his matches.
ESTHER, to Victor, somehow charmed: You never told me that.
WALTER: Of course; she’s the one made him take it up. He laughs to Victor. She thought it was elegant!
VICTOR: Hey, that’s right!
WALTER, laughing at the memory: He did look pretty good too! He spreads his jacket away from his chest. I’ve still got the wounds! To Victor, who laughs: Especially with those French gauntlets she—
VICTOR, recalling: Say . . . ! Looking around with an enlivened need: I wonder where the hell . . . He suddenly moves toward a bureau. Wait, I think they used to be in . . .
ESTHER, to Walter: French gauntlets?
WALTER: She brought them from Paris. Gorgeously embroidered. He looked like one of the musketeers.
Out of the drawer where he earlier found the ice skate, Victor takes a pair of emblazoned gauntlets.
VICTOR: Here they are! What do you know!
ESTHER, reaching her hand out: Aren’t they beautiful!
He hands her one.
VICTOR: God, I’d forgotten all about them. He slips one on his hand.
WALTER: Christmas, 1929.
VICTOR, moving his hand in the gauntlet: Look at that, they’re still soft . . . To Walter—a little shy in asking: How do you remember all this stuff?
WALTER: Why not? Don’t you?
ESTHER: He doesn’t remember your mother very well.
VICTOR: I remember her. Looking at the gauntlet: It’s just her face; somehow I can never see her.
WALTER, warmly: That’s amazing, Vic. To Esther: She adored him.
ESTHER, pleased: Did she?
WALTER: Victor? If it started to rain she’d run all the way to school with his galoshes. Her Victor—my God! By the time he could light a match he was already Louis Pasteur.
VICTOR: It’s odd . . . like the harp! I can almost hear the music . . . But I can never see her face. Somehow. For a moment, silence, as he looks across at the harp.
WALTER: What’s the problem?
Pause. Victor’s eyes are swollen with feeling. He turns and looks up at Walter, who suddenly is embarrassed and oddly anxious.
SOLOMON—enters from the bedroom. He looks quite distressed. He is in his vest, his tie is open. Without coming downstage: Please, Doctor, if you wouldn’t mind I would like to . . . He breaks off, indicating the bedroom.
WALTER: What is it?
SOLOMON: Just for one minute, please.
Walter stands. Solomon glances at Victor and Esther and returns to the bedroom.
WALTER: I’ll be right back. He goes rather quickly up and into the bedroom.
A pause. Victor is sitting in silence, unable to face her.
ESTHER, with delicacy and pity, sensing his conflicting feelings: Why can’t you take him as he is?
He glances at her.
Well you can’t expect him to go into an apology, Vic—he probably sees it all differently, anyway.
He is silent. She comes to him.
I know it’s difficult, but he is trying to make a gesture, I think.
VICTOR: I guess he is, yes.
ESTHER: You know what would be lovely? If we could take a few weeks and go to like . . . out-of-the-way places . . . just to really break it up and see all the things that people do. You’ve been around such mean, petty people for so long and little ugly tricks. I’m serious—it’s not romantic. We’re much too suspicious of everything.
VICTOR, staring ahead: Strange guy.
ESTHER: Why?
VICTOR: Well, to walk in that way—as though nothing ever happened.
ESTHER: Why not? What can be done about it?
VICTOR—slight pause: I feel I have to say something.
ESTHER, with a slight trepidation, less than she feels: What can you say?
VICTOR: You feel I ought to just take the money and shut up, heh?
ESTHER: But what’s the point of going backwards?
VICTOR, with a self-bracing tension: I’m not going to take this money unless I talk to him.
ESTHER, frightened: You can’t bear the thought that he’s decent.
He looks at her sharply.
That’s all it is, dear. I’m sorry, I have to say it.
VICTOR, without raising his voice: I can’t bear that he’s decent!
ESTHER: You throw this away, you’ve got to explain it to me. You can’t go on blaming everything on him or the system or God knows what else! You’re free and you can’t make a move, Victor, and that’s what’s driving me crazy! Silence. Quietly: Now take this money.
He is silent, staring at her.
You take this money! Or I’m washed up. You hear me? If you’re stuck it doesn’t mean I have to be. Now that’s it.
Movements are heard within the bedroom. She straightens. Victor smooths down his hair with a slow, preparatory motion of his hand, like one adjusting himself for combat.
WALTER—enters from the bedroom, smiling, shaking his head. Indicating the bedroom: Boy—we got a tiger here. What is this between you, did you know him before?
VICTOR: No. Why? What’d he say?
WALTER: He’s still trying to buy it outright. He laughs. He talks like you added five years by calling him up.
VICTOR: Well, what’s the difference, I don’t mind.
WALTER, registering the distant rebuke: No, that’s fine, that’s all right. He sits. Slight pause. We don’t understand each other, do we?
VICTOR, with a certain thrust, matching Walter’s smile: I am a little confused, Walter . . . yes.
WALTER: Why is that?
Victor doesn’t answer at once.
Come on, we’ll all be dead soon!
VICTOR: All right, I’ll give you one example. When I called you Monday and Tuesday and again this morning—
WALTER: I’ve explained that.
VICTOR: But I don’t make phone calls to pass the time. Your nurse sounded like I was a pest of some kind . . . it was humiliating.
WALTER—oddly, he is over-upset: I’m terribly sorry, she shouldn’t have done that.
VICTOR: I know, Walter, but I can’t imagine she takes that tone all by herself.
WALTER, aware now of the depth of resentment in Victor: Oh no—she’s often that way. I’ve never referred to you like that.
Victor is silent, not convinced.
B
elieve me, will you? I’m terribly sorry. I’m overwhelmed with work, that’s all it is.
VICTOR: Well, you asked me, so I’m telling you.
WALTER: Yes! You should! But don’t misinterpret that. Slight pause. His tension has increased. He braves a smile. Now about this tax thing. He’d be willing to make the appraisal twenty-five thousand. With difficulty: If you’d like, I’d be perfectly willing for you to have the whole amount I’d be saving.
Slight pause.
ESTHER: Twelve thousand?
WALTER: Whatever it comes to.
Pause. Esther slowly looks to Victor.
You must be near retirement now, aren’t you?
ESTHER, excitedly: He’s past it. But he’s trying to decide what to do.
WALTER: Oh. To Victor—near open embarrassment now: It would come in handy, then, wouldn’t it?
Victor glances at him as a substitute for a reply.
I don’t need it, that’s all, Vic. Actually, I’ve been about to call you for quite some time now.
VICTOR: What for?
WALTER—suddenly, with a strange quick laugh, he reaches and touches Victor’s knee: Don’t be suspicious!
VICTOR, grinning: I’m just trying to figure it out, Walter.
WALTER: Yes, good. All right. Slight pause. I thought it was time we got to know one another. That’s all.
Slight pause.
VICTOR: You know, Walter, I tried to call you a couple of times before this about the furniture—must be three years ago.
WALTER: I was sick.
VICTOR, surprised: Oh . . . Because I left a lot of messages.
WALTER: I was quite sick. I was hospitalized.
ESTHER: What happened?
WALTER—slight pause. As though he were not quite sure whether to say it: I broke down.
Slight pause.
VICTOR: I had no idea.
WALTER: Actually, I’m only beginning to catch up with things. I was out of commission for nearly three years. With a thrust of success: But I’m almost thankful for it now—I’ve never been happier!
ESTHER: You seem altogether different!
WALTER: I think I am, Esther. I live differently, I think differently. All I have now is a small apartment. And I got rid of the nursing homes—
VICTOR: What nursing homes?
WALTER, with a removed self-amusement: Oh, I owned three nursing homes. There’s big money in the aged, you know. Helpless, desperate children trying to dump their parents—nothing like it. I even pulled out of the market. Fifty per cent of my time now is in City hospitals. And I tell you, I’m alive. For the first time. I do medicine, and that’s it. Attempting an intimate grin: Not that I don’t soak the rich occasionally, but only enough to live, really. It is as though this was his mission here, and he waits for Victor’s comment.
VICTOR: Well, that must be great.
WALTER, seizing on this minute encouragement: Vic, I wish we could talk for weeks, there’s so much I want to tell you. . . . It is not rolling quite the way he would wish and he must pick examples of his new feelings out of the air. I never had friends—you probably know that. But I do now, I have good friends. He moves, sitting nearer Victor, his enthusiasm flowing. It all happens so gradually. You start out wanting to be the best, and there’s no question that you do need a certain fanaticism; there’s so much to know and so little time. Until you’ve eliminated everything extraneous—he smiles—including people. And of course the time comes when you realize that you haven’t merely been specializing in something—something has been specializing in you. You become a kind of instrument, an instrument that cuts money out of people, or fame out of the world. And it finally makes you stupid. Power can do that. You get to think that because you can frighten people they love you. Even that you love them.—And the whole thing comes down to fear. One night I found myself in the middle of my living room, dead drunk with a knife in my hand, getting ready to kill my wife.
ESTHER: Good Lord!
WALTER: Oh ya—and I nearly made it too! He laughs. But there’s one virtue in going nuts—provided you survive, of course. You get to see the terror—not the screaming kind, but the slow, daily fear you call ambition, and cautiousness, and piling up the money. And really, what I wanted to tell you for some time now—is that you helped me to understand that in myself.
VICTOR: Me?
WALTER: Yes. He grins warmly, embarrassed. Because of what you did. I could never understand it, Vic—after all, you were the better student. And to stay with a job like that through all those years seemed . . . He breaks off momentarily, the uncertainty of Victor’s reception widening his smile. You see, it never dawned on me until I got sick—that you’d made a choice.
VICTOR: A choice, how?
WALTER: You wanted a real life. And that’s an expensive thing; it costs. He has found his theme now; sees he has at last touched something in Victor. A breath of confidence comes through now. I know I may sound terribly naïve, but I’m still used to talking about anything that matters. Frankly, I didn’t answer your calls this week because I was afraid. I’ve struggled so long for a concept of myself and I’m not sure I can make it believable to you. But I’d like to. He sees permission to go on in Victor’s perplexed eyes: You see, I got to a certain point where . . . I dreaded my own work; I finally couldn’t cut. There are times, as you know, when if you leave someone alone he might live a year or two; while if you go in you might kill him. And the decision is often . . . not quite, but almost . . . arbitrary. But the odds are acceptable, provided you think the right thoughts. Or don’t think at all, which I managed to do till then. Slight pause. He is no longer smiling; instead, a near-embarrassment is on him. I ran into a cluster of misjudgments. It can happen, but it never had to me, not one on top of the other. And they had one thing in common; they’d all been diagnosed by other men as inoperable. And quite suddenly the . . . the whole prospect of my own motives opened up. Why had I taken risks that very competent men had declined? And the quick answer, of course, is—to pull off the impossible. Shame the competition. But suddenly I saw something else. And it was terror. In dead center, directing my brains, my hands, my ambition—for thirty years.
Slight pause.
VICTOR: Terror of what?
Pause.
WALTER, his gaze direct on Victor now: Of it ever happening to me—he glances at the center chair—as it happened to him. Overnight, for no reason, to find yourself degraded and thrown-down. With the faintest hint of impatience and challenge: You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
Victor turns away slightly, refusing commitment.
Isn’t that why you turned your back on it all?
VICTOR, sensing the relevancy to himself now: Partly. Not altogether, though.
WALTER: Vic, we were both running from the same thing. I thought I wanted to be tops, but what it was was untouchable. I ended in a swamp of success and bankbooks, you on civil service. The difference is that you haven’t hurt other people to defend yourself. And I’ve learned to respect that, Vic; you simply tried to make yourself useful.
ESTHER: That’s wonderful—to come to such an understanding with yourself.
WALTER: Esther, it’s a strange thing; in the hospital, for the first time since we were boys, I began to feel . . . like a brother. In the sense that we shared something. To Victor: And I feel I would know how to be friends now.
VICTOR—slight pause; he is unsure: Well fine. I’m glad of that.
WALTER—sees the reserve but feels he has made headway and presses on a bit more urgently: You see, that’s why you’re still so married. That’s a very rare thing. And why your boy’s in such good shape. You’ve lived a real life. To Esther: But you know that better than I.
ESTHER: I don’t know what I know, Walter.
WALTER: Don’t doubt it, dear—believe me, you’re fortunate people. T
o Victor: You know that, don’t you?
VICTOR, without looking at Esther: I think so.
ESTHER: It’s not quite as easy as you make it, Walter.
WALTER—hesitates, then throws himself into it: Look, I’ve had a wild idea—it’ll probably seem absurd to you, but I wish you’d think about it before you dismiss it. I gather you haven’t decided what to do with yourself now? You’re retiring . . . ?
VICTOR: I’ll decide one of these days, I’m still thinking.
WALTER, nervously: Could I suggest something?
VICTOR: Sure, go ahead.
WALTER: We’ve been interviewing people for the new wing. For the administrative side. Kind of liaison people between the scientists and the board. And it occurred to me several times that you might fit in there.
Slight pause.
ESTHER, with a release of expectation: That would be wonderful!
VICTOR—slight pause. He glances at her with suppression, but his voice betrays excitement: What could I do there, though?
WALTER, sensing Victor’s interest: It’s kind of fluid at the moment, but there’s a place for people with a certain amount of science who—
VICTOR: I have no degree, you know.
WALTER: But you’ve had analytic chemistry, and a lot of math and physics, if I recall. If you thought you needed it you could take some courses in the evenings. I think you have enough background.—How would you feel about that?
VICTOR, digging in against the temptation: Well . . . I’d like to know more about it, sure.
ESTHER, as though to press him to accept: It’d be great if he could work in science, it’s really the only thing he ever wanted.
WALTER: I know; it’s a pity he never went on with it. Turning to Victor: It’d be perfectly simple, Vic, I’m chairman of the committee. I could set it all up—
Solomon enters. They turn to him, surprised. He seems about to say something, but in fear changes his mind.
SOLOMON: Excuse me, go right ahead. He goes nervously to his portfolio, reaching into it—which was not his original intention. I’m sorry to disturb you. He takes out an orange and starts back to the bedroom, then halts, addressing Walter: About the harp. If you’ll make me a straight out-and-out sale, I would be willing to go another fifty dollars. So it’s eleven fifty, and between the two of you nobody has to do any favors.
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 77