Slight pause.
MAYA: Could he live, in America?
ADRIAN: I’m sure he could. Universities’d be honored to have him.
SIGMUND: I am speaking English like six-years-old child.
ADRIAN: Faculty wives’ll be overjoyed to correct you. You’d be a big hit—with all that hair.
SIGMUND, laughs dryly: You are not going to Algeria?
MARCUS: On Friday.
ADRIAN: What’s in Algeria?
MARCUS: There’s a writers’ congress—they’ve asked me to go.
ADRIAN: Communist countries?
MARCUS: Yes. But it’s a big one—Arabs, Africans, Latin Americans . . . the lot.
SIGMUND: The French?
MARCUS: Some French, yes—Italians too, I think.
ADRIAN: What do you do at those things?
MAYA, admiringly: He represents our country—he lies on the beach with a gin and tonic.
MARCUS, laughs: It’s too cold for the beach now. To Adrian: They’re basically ideological discussions.
SIGMUND: Boring, no?
MARCUS: Agony. But there are some interesting people sometimes.
SIGMUND: You can speak of us there?
Marcus turns to him, silent, unable to answer.
No.
MARCUS: We’re not on the agenda.
MAYA: It’s difficult, dear . . .
SIGMUND: But perhaps privately—to the Italian comrades? . . . French? Perhaps they would be interested for my manuscript.
Marcus nods positively, but turns up his palms—he’ll do what he can.
With the slightest edge of sarcasm: You will see, perhaps. He chucks his head, closes his eyes with his face stretched upward, his hand tapping frustratedly on his chair arm, his foot beating. So-so-so-so.
MARCUS, looking front: The important thing . . . is to be useful.
SIGMUND, flatly, without irony: Yes, always. Slight pause. Thank you, that you have returned for this, I am grateful.
MARCUS: Whatever you decide, it ought to be soon. Once they move to prosecute . . .
SIGMUND: Yes. I have still some questions—we can take a walk later, perhaps.
MARCUS: All right. I’ve told you all I know . . .
SIGMUND: . . . About ourselves
MARCUS, surprised: Oh. All right.
Pause.
MAYA: How handsome you all are! I must say . . .
Marcus laughs, she persists.
Really, it’s unusual for writers. Suddenly, to Irina: And she is so lovely . . . Du bist sehr schön.
IRINA: Danke.
MAYA, to Marcus: Isn’t she very young?
MARCUS, shrugs: We only met two days ago.
MAYA, touching his hair: How marvelous. You are like God, darling—you can always create new people. She laughs, and with sudden energy: Play something, Sigmund! . . . She goes to Sigmund to get him up. Come . . .
SIGMUND: No, no, no . . .
MAYA, suddenly bends and kisses the top of his head, her eyes filling with tears: Don’t keep that thing . . .
She reaches for his pocket; he takes her hand and pats it, looking up at her. She stares down at him.
The day he walked in here for the first time . . . She glances at Marcus. Do you remember? The snow was half a meter high on his hat—I thought he was a peasant selling potatoes, he bowed the snow all over my typewriter. She glances at Adrian. And he takes out this lump of paper—it was rolled up like a bomb. A story full of colors, like a painting; this boy from the beet fields—a writer! It was a miracle—such prose from a field of beets. That morning—for half an hour—I believed Socialism. For half an hour I . . .
MARCUS, cutting her off: What brings you back, Adrian? The telephone rings in the bedroom. Probably for you.
MAYA: For me? She goes toward the bedroom. I can’t imagine . . . She exits.
ADRIAN: I don’t really know why I came. There’s always been something here that I . . .
IRINA, getting up, pointing to the piano: I may?
MARCUS: Certainly . . . please.
Irina sits at the piano.
SIGMUND: I think you will write your book again.
ADRIAN: I doubt it—there’s a kind of music here that escapes me. I really don’t think I dig you people.
IRINA, testing the piano, she runs a scale; it is badly out of tune and she makes a face, turning to Marcus: Ach . . .
MARCUS, apologizing: I’m sorry, it’s too old to be tuned anymore . . . but go ahead . . .
MAYA, entering: There’s no one—they cut off.
Sigmund turns completely around to her, alerted.
MAYA, to him, reassuringly: I’m sure they’ll call back . . . it was an accident. Good! You play?
Irina launches into a fast “Bei Meir Bist Du Schön,” the strings whining.
MAYA: Marvelous! Jitterbug! She breaks into a jitterbug with her glass in one hand, lifting her skirt. Come on, Adrian! . . . She starts for Adrian.
IRINA, stops playing and stands up, pushing her fingers into her ears: Is too, too . . .
MAYA: No, play, play . . .
IRINA, refusing, laughing, as she descends onto the carpet beside Marcus, shutting her ears: Please, please, please . . .
MARCUS, patting Irina: I believe she’s done concerts . . . serious music. He looks at his watch; then, to Sigmund: You’re not going outside with that thing, are you?
Sigmund glances at him.
It’s absurd.
MAYA: It must be the Americans—ever since they started building that hotel the phones keep ringing.
ADRIAN: What hotel?
MAYA: The Hilton . . . three blocks from here. It’s disarranged the telephones.
MARCUS: I’d love to read your novel—do you have it with you?
ADRIAN: It’s no good.
MARCUS: That’s surprising—what’s the problem?
ADRIAN, sits up: Well . . . I started out with a bizarre, exotic quality. People sort of embalmed in a society of amber. But the longer it got, the less unique it became. I finally wondered if the idea of unfreedom can be sustained in the mind.
MARCUS: You relied on that.
ADRIAN: Yes. But I had to keep injecting melodramatic reminders. The brain tires of unfreedom. It’s like a bad back—you simply learn to avoid making certain movements . . . like . . . whatever’s in this ceiling; or if nothing is; we still have to live, and talk, and the rest of it. I really thought I knew, but I saw that I didn’t; it’s been an education tonight. I’d love to ask you something, Marcus—why do you carry a gun?
MARCUS: I don’t, normally. I was planning a trip into the mountains in Algeria—still pretty rough up there in places. He looks at his watch.
MAYA: He fought a battle in Mexico last year. In the Chiapas. Like a cowboy.
MARCUS: Not really—no one was hurt.
ADRIAN: What the hell do you go to those places for?
MARCUS: It interests me—where there is no law, people alone with their customs. I started out to be an anthropologist.
ADRIAN: What happened?
MARCUS: The Nazis, the war. You were too young, I guess.
ADRIAN: I was in the army in the fifties, but after Korea and before Vietnam.
MARCUS: You’re a lucky generation, you missed everything.
ADRIAN: I wonder sometimes. History came at us like a rumor. We were never really there.
MARCUS: Is that why you come here?
ADRIAN: Might be part of it. We’re always smelling the smoke, but we’re never quite sure who the devil really is. Drives us nuts.
MARCUS: You don’t like ambiguity.
ADRIAN: Oh sure—providing it’s clear. He laughs. Or maybe it’s always clearer in somebody else’s country.
MARCUS: I was just about to
say—the first time I came to America—a few years after the war . . .
ADRIAN: . . . You’re not an American citizen, are you?
MARCUS: Very nearly, but I had a little . . . ambiguity with your Immigration Department. He smiles.
ADRIAN: You came from the wrong country.
MARCUS: No—it was the right country when I boarded ship for New York. But the Communists took over here while I was on the high seas. A Mr. Donahue, Immigration Inspector, Port of New York, did not approve. He put me in a cage.
ADRIAN: Why!
MARCUS: Suspicion I was a Red agent. Actually, I’d come on an invitation to lecture at Syracuse University. I’d published my first two—or it may have been three novels in Paris by then. I phoned the university—from my cage—and they were appalled, but no one lifted a finger, of course, and I was shipped back to Europe. It was terribly unambiguous, Adrian—you were a fascist country, to me. I was wrong, of course, but so it appeared. Anyway, I decided to come home and have a look here—I stepped off the train directly into the arms of our police.
ADRIAN: As an American spy.
MARCUS, laughs: What else?
ADRIAN, nodding: I got ya, Marcus.
MARCUS: Yes. Slight pause. But it’s better now.
Adrian glances at Sigmund.
It has been, anyway. But one has to be of the generation that can remember. Otherwise, it’s as you say—a sort of rumor that has no reality—excepting for oneself.
Sigmund drinks deeply from his glass. Slight pause.
ADRIAN, stands, and from behind Sigmund looks down at him for an instant: She’s sure to come, huh?
MARCUS: I’m sure she will.
ADRIAN, strolls to the window at right, stretches his back and arms, looks out of the window: It’s starting to snow. Slight pause. God, it’s a beautiful city. He lingers there for a moment, then walks, his hands thrust into his back pockets. What do you suppose would happen if I went to the Minister of the Interior tonight—if I lost my mind and knocked on his door and raised hell about this?
Marcus turns to him, eyebrows raised.
I’m serious.
MARCUS: Well . . . what happened when you tried to reason with Johnson or Nixon during Vietnam?
ADRIAN: Right. But of course we could go into the streets, which you can’t . . .
SIGMUND: Why not?
ADRIAN, surprised: With all their tanks here?
SIGMUND: Yes, even so. Pause. Is only a question of the fantasy. In this country we have not Las Vegas. The American knows very well is almost impossible to winning money from this slot machine. But he is enjoying to experience hope. He is playing for the hope. For us, is inconceivable. Before such a machine we would experience only despair. For this reason we do not go into the street.
ADRIAN: You’re more realistic about power . . .
SIGMUND: This is mistake, Adrian, we are not realistic. We also believe we can escaping power—by telling lies. For this reason, I think you have difficulty to write about us. You cannot imagine how fantastically we lie.
MARCUS: I don’t think we’re any worse than others . . .
SIGMUND: Oh certainly, yes—but perhaps is not exactly lying because we do not expect to deceive anyone; the professor lies to the student, the student to the professor—but each knows the other is lying. We must lie, it is our only freedom. To lie is our slot machine—we know we cannot win, but it gives us the feeling of hope. Is like a serious play which no one really believes, but the technique is admirable. Our country is now a theatre, where no one is permitted to walk out and everyone is obliged to applaud.
MARCUS: That is a marvelous description, Sigmund—of the whole world.
SIGMUND: No, I must object—when Adrian speaks to me it is always his personal opinion. But with us, is impossible to speaking so simply, we must always making theatre.
MARCUS: I’ve been as plain as I know how to be. What is it you don’t believe?
SIGMUND, laughs: But that is the problem in the theatre—I believe everything but I am convinced of nothing.
MAYA: It’s enough.
SIGMUND: Excuse me, Maya—for me is not enough; if I am waking up in New York one morning, I must have concrete reason, not fantastic reason.
MAYA: Darling, they’ve taken your book . . .
SIGMUND, with sudden force: But is my country—is this reason to leave my country!
MAYA: There are people who love you enough to want to keep you from prison. What is fantastic about that?
SIGMUND, turns to Marcus, with a smile: You are loving me, Marcus?
Marcus, overwhelmed by resentment, turns to Sigmund, silent.
Then we have not this reason. Slight pause. Therefore . . . perhaps you have come back for different reason.
MARCUS: I came back to prevent a calamity, a disaster for all of us . . .
SIGMUND: Yes, but is also for them a calamity. If I am in prison the whole world will know they are gangster. This is not intelligent—my book are published in nine country. For them is also disaster.
MARCUS: So this fellow in London? These threats? They’re not serious?
SIGMUND: I am sure they wish me to believe so, therefore is very serious.
MARCUS: You don’t believe a word I’ve told you, do you? There was no man at all in London; that conversation never happened? There’ll be no arrest? No trial?
SIGMUND, pause: I think not.
MARCUS: Then give me back my pistol.
Sigmund does not move. Marcus holds out his hand.
Give it to me, you’re in no danger; I’ve invented the whole thing.
Sigmund is motionless.
Are you simply a thief? Why are you keeping it?
Sigmund is silent.
MAYA: Marcus . . .
MARCUS: I insist he answer me . . . To Sigmund: Why are you keeping that pistol? He laughs. But of course you know perfectly well I’ve told you the truth; it was just too good an opportunity to cover me with your contempt . . . in her eyes and—pointing toward Adrian—the eyes of the world.
ADRIAN: Now, Marcus, I had no intention . . .
MARCUS: Oh come now, Adrian, he’s been writing this story for you all evening! New York Times feature on Socialist decadence.
ADRIAN: Now, wait a minute . . .
MARCUS: But it’s so obvious! . . .
ADRIAN: Wait a minute, will you? He has a right to be uneasy.
MARCUS: No more than I do, and for quite the same reason.
ADRIAN: Why!
MARCUS, laughs: To whom am I talking, Adrian—the New York Times, or your novel, or you?
ADRIAN: For Christ’s sake, are you serious?
MARCUS, laughs: Why not? You may turn out to be as dangerous to me as he believes I am to him. Yes!
Adrian looks astonished.
Why is it any more absurd? Especially after that last piece of yours, which, you’ll pardon me, was stuffed with the most primitive misunderstandings of what it means to live in this country. You haven’t a clue, Adrian—you’ll forgive me, but I have to say that. So I’m entitled to a bit of uneasiness.
ADRIAN: Marcus, are you asking me to account for myself?
MARCUS: By no means, but why must I?
MAYA: Why don’t we all go to the playground and swing with the other children?
MARCUS, laughs: Very good, yes.
MAYA, to Adrian: Why is he so complicated? They allow him this house to store his father’s library. These books earn hard currency. To sell them he must have a passport.
MARCUS: Oh, he knows all that, dear—it’s hopeless; when did the facts ever change a conviction? It doesn’t matter. He looks at his watch.
ADRIAN: It does, though. It’s a terrible thing. It’s maddening.
MARCUS, denigrating: Well . . .
ADRIAN: It is,
you know it is. Christ, you’re such old friends, you’re writers . . . I never understood the sadness in this country, but I swear, I think it’s . . .
MARCUS: Oh, come off it, Adrian—what country isn’t sad?
ADRIAN: I think you’ve accepted something.
MARCUS: And you haven’t?
ADRIAN: Goddammit, Marcus, we can still speak for ourselves! And not for some . . . He breaks off.
MARCUS: Some what?
ADRIAN, walks away: . . . Well, never mind.
MARCUS: I’ve spoken for no one but myself here, Adrian. If there seems to be some . . . unspoken interest . . . well, there is, of course. I am interested in seeing that this country does not fall back into darkness. And if he must sacrifice something for that, I think he should. That’s plain enough, isn’t it?
ADRIAN: I guess the question is . . . how you feel about that yourself.
MARCUS, laughs: But I feel terribly about it. I think it’s dreadful. I think there’s no question he is our best living writer. Must I go on, or is that enough? Silence. What change can feelings make? It is a situation which I can tell you—no one wants . . . no one. If I flew into an orgasm of self-revelation here it might seem more candid, but it would change nothing . . . except possibly to multiply the confusion.
MAYA, to Adrian: I think you were saying the same thing before. . . . Tell him.
MARCUS: What?
ADRIAN: Whether it matters anymore, what anyone feels . . . about anything. Whether we’re not just some sort of . . . filament that only lights up when it’s plugged into whatever power there is.
MAYA: It’s interesting.
MARCUS: I don’t know—it seems rather childish. When was a man ever conceivable apart from society? Unless you’re looking for the angel who wrote each of our blessed names in his book of gold. The collective giveth and the collective taketh away—beyond that . . . he looks to the ceiling . . . was never anything but a sentimental metaphor; a God who now is simply a form of art. Whose style may still move us, but there was never any mercy in that plaster. The only difference now, it seems to me, is that we’ve ceased to expect any.
ADRIAN: I know one reason I came. I know it’s an awkward question, but—those tanks bivouacked out there in the countryside . . . do they figure at all in your minds?
MAYA: Do you write every minute?
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 93