The people from the relief office form a line as on a subway platform. Joe comes behind the line singing and offering flowers from a basket. There is the sound of an approaching train, its windows flashing light. Joe throws himself under it: a squeal of brakes. The crowd sings “In New York City, You Really Got to Know Your Line,” one by one taking the lyrics, ending in a chorus. Fadeout.
Lights come up on Edie. Lee is in spotlight.
LEE, to audience: Any girl with an apartment of her own was beautiful. She was one of the dialogue writers for the Superman comic strip. To her: Edie, can I sleep here tonight?
EDIE: Oh, hi, Lee—yeah, sure. Let me finish and I’ll put a sheet on the couch. If you have any laundry, throw it in the sink. I’m going to wash later.
He stands behind her as she works.
This is going to be a terrific sequence.
LEE: It’s amazing to me how you can keep your mind on it.
EDIE: He’s also a great teacher of class consciousness.
LEE: Superman?
EDIE: He stands for justice!
LEE: Oh! You mean under capitalism you can’t . . .
EDIE: Sure! The implications are terrific. She works lovingly for a moment.
LEE: Y’know, you’re beautiful when you talk about politics, your face lights up.
EDIE, smiling: Don’t be such a bourgeois horse’s ass. I’ll get your sheet. She starts up.
LEE: Could I sleep in your bed tonight? I don’t know what it is lately—I’m always lonely. Are you?
EDIE: Sometimes. But a person doesn’t have to go to bed with people to be connected to mankind.
LEE: You’re right. I’m ashamed of myself.
EDIE: Why don’t you join the Party?
LEE: I guess I don’t want to ruin my chances; I want to be a sportswriter.
EDIE: You could write for the Worker sports page.
LEE: The Daily Worker sports page?
EDIE: Then help improve it! Why are you so defeatist, hundreds of people are joining the Party every week.
LEE: I don’t know why, maybe I’m too skeptical—or cynical. Like . . . when I was in Flint, Michigan, during the sit-down strike. Thought I’d write a feature story . . . all those thousands of men barricaded in the GM plant, the wives hoisting food up to the windows in baskets. It was like the French Revolution. But then I got to talk to them as individuals, and the prejudice! The ignorance! . . . In the Ford plant there was damn near a race war because some of the Negro workers didn’t want to join the strike. . . . It was murderous.
EDIE: Well, they’re still backward, I know that.
LEE: No, they’re normal. I really wonder if there’s going to be time to save this country from itself. You ever wonder that? You do, don’t you.
EDIE, fighting the temptation to give way: You really want my answer?
LEE: Yes.
EDIE: We’re picketing the Italian consulate tomorrow, to protest Mussolini sending Italian troops to the Spanish Civil War. Come! Do something! You love Hemingway so much, read what he just said—“One man alone is no fucking good.” As decadent as he is, even he’s learning.
LEE: Really, your face gets so beautiful when you . . .
EDIE: Anyone can be beautiful if what they believe is beautiful! I believe in my comrades. I believe in the Soviet Union. I believe in the working class and the peace of the whole world when socialism comes . . .
LEE: Boy, you really are wonderful. Look, now that I’m on relief can I take you out to dinner? I’ll pay, I mean.
EDIE, smiles: Why must you pay for me, just because I’m a woman?
LEE: Right! I forgot about that.
EDIE, working: I’ve got to finish this panel. . . . I’ll make up the couch in a minute. . . . What about the Writer’s Project, you getting on?
LEE: I think so; they’re putting people on to write a WPA Guide, it’s going to be a detailed history of every section of the country. I might get sent up to the Lake Champlain district. Imagine? They’re interviewing direct descendants of the soldiers who fought the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys?
EDIE: Oh, yes! They beat the British up there.
LEE: It’s a wonderful project; ’cause people really don’t know their own history.
EDIE, with longing and certainty: When there’s socialism everyone will.
LEE, leaning over to look at her work: Why don’t you have Superman get laid? Or married even.
EDIE: He’s much too busy.
He comes closer to kiss her, she starts to respond, then rejects.
What are you doing?
LEE: When you say the word “socialism” your face gets so beautiful . . .
EDIE: You’re totally cynical, aren’t you.
LEE: Why!
EDIE: You pretend to have a serious conversation when all you want is to jump into my bed; it’s the same attitude you have to the auto workers . . .
LEE: I can’t see the connection between the auto workers and . . . !
EDIE, once again on firm ground: Everything is connected! I have to ask you to leave!
LEE: Edie!
EDIE: You are not a good person! She bursts into tears and rushes off.
LEE, alone, full of remorse: She’s right, too! He exits.
Grandpa enters from choral area, sits with his newspaper, and is immediately immersed. Then Rose’s niece Lucille, her sister Fanny, and Doris, who wears a bathrobe, carry folding chairs and seat themselves around a table. Lucille deals cards. Now Rose begins speaking within the choral area, and as she speaks, she moves onto the stage proper.
ROSE: That endless Brooklyn July! That little wooden house baking in the heat. She enters the stage. I never smelled an owl, but in July the smell of that attic crept down the stairs, and to me it smelled as dry and dusty as an owl. She surveys the women staring at their cards. From Coney Island to Brooklyn Bridge, how many thousands of women waited out the afternoons dreaming at their cards and praying for luck? Ah, luck, luck . . .
DORIS: Sidney’s finishing a beautiful new song, Aunt Rose.
ROSE, sitting at the table, taking up her hand of cards: Maybe this one’ll be lucky for you. Why are you always in a bathrobe?
DORIS: I’m only half a block away.
ROSE: But you’re so young! Why don’t you get dressed and leave the block once in a while?
FANNY, smugly: All my girls love it home, too.
ROSE: It’s you, isn’t it?
FANNY, brushing dandruff off her bosom and nervously examining her cards: I’m trying to make up my mind.
ROSE: Concentrate. Forget your dandruff for a minute.
FANNY: It wasn’t dandruff, it was a thread.
ROSE: Her dandruff is threads. It’s an obsession.
LUCILLE: I didn’t tell you; this spring she actually called me and my sisters to come and spend the day cleaning her house.
FANNY: What’s so terrible! We used to have the most marvelous times the four of us cleaning the house . . . Suddenly: It’s turning into an oven in here.
LUCILLE: I’m going to faint.
ROSE: Don’t faint, all the windows are open in the back of the house. We’re supposed to be away.
FANNY: But there’s no draft. . . . For Papa’s sake . . .
LUCILLE: Why couldn’t you be away and you left a window open? . . . Just don’t answer the door.
ROSE: I don’t want to take the chance. This one is a professional collector, I’ve seen him do it; if a window’s open he tries to listen. They’re merciless. . . . I sent Stanislaus for lemons, we’ll have cold lemonade. Play.
FANNY: I can’t believe they’d actually evict you, Rose.
ROSE: You can’t? Wake up, Fanny. It’s a bank—may they choke after the fortune of money we kept in there all those years! Ask them
for two hundred dollars now and they . . . Tears start to her eyes.
FANNY: Rose, dear, come on—something’ll happen, you’ll see. Moe’s got to find something soon, a man so well known.
LUCILLE: Couldn’t he ask his mother for a little?
ROSE: His mother says there’s a Depression going on. Meantime you can go blind from the diamonds on her fingers. Which he gave her! The rottenness of people! I tell you, the next time I start believing in anybody or anything I hope my tongue is cut out!
DORIS: Maybe Lee should come back and help out?
ROSE: Never! Lee is going to think his own thoughts and face the facts. He’s got nothing to learn from us. Let him help himself.
LUCILLE: But to take up Communism—
ROSE: Lucille, what do you know about it? What does anybody know about it? The newspapers? The newspapers said the stock market will never come down again.
LUCILLE: But they’re against God, Aunt Rose.
ROSE: I’m overjoyed you got so religious, Lucille, but please for God’s sake don’t tell me about it again!
FANNY, rises, starts to leave: I’ll be right down.
ROSE: Now she’s going to pee on her finger for luck.
FANNY: All right! So I won’t go! She returns to her chair. And I wasn’t going to pee on my finger!
ROSE: So what’re we playing—cards or statues?
Doris sits looking at her cards, full of confusion.
GRANDPA, putting down his paper: Why do they need this election?
ROSE: What do you mean, why they need this election?
GRANDPA: But everybody knows Roosevelt is going to win again. I still think he’s too radical, but to go through another election is a terrible waste of money.
ROSE: What are you talking about, Papa—it’s four years, they have to have an election.
GRANDPA: Why! If they decided to make him king . . .
ROSE: King!
FANNY, pointing at Grandpa, agreeing and laughing: Believe me!
GRANDPA: If he was king he wouldn’t have to waste all his time making these ridiculous election speeches, and maybe he could start to improve things!
ROSE: If I had a stamp I’d write him a letter.
GRANDPA: He could be another Kaiser Franz Joseph. Then after he dies you can have all the elections you want.
ROSE, to Doris: Are you playing cards or hatching an egg?
DORIS, startled: Oh, it’s my turn? She turns a card. All right; here!
ROSE: Hallelujah.
She plays a card. It is Lucille’s turn; she plays.
Did you lose weight?
LUCILLE: I’ve been trying. I’m thinking of going back to the carnival.
Doris quickly throws an anxious look toward Grandpa, who is oblivious, reading.
FANNY, indicating Grandpa secretively: You better not mention . . .
LUCILLE: He doesn’t have to know, and anyway I would never dance anymore; I’d only assist the magician and tell a few jokes. They’re talking about starting up again in Jersey.
ROSE: Herby can’t find anything.
LUCILLE: He’s going out of his mind, Aunt Rose.
ROSE: God Almighty. So what’s it going to be, Fanny?
FANNY, feeling rushed, studying her cards: One second! Just let me figure it out.
ROSE: When they passed around the brains this family was out to lunch.
FANNY: It’s so hot in here I can’t think!
ROSE: Play! I can’t open the window. I’m not going to face that man again. He has merciless eyes.
Stanislaus, a middle-aged seaman in T-shirt and dungarees, enters through the front door.
You come in the front door? The mortgage man could come today!
STANISLAUS: I forgot! I didn’t see anybody on the street, though. He lifts bag of lemons. Fresh lemonade coming up on deck. I starched all the napkins. He exits.
ROSE: Starched all the napkins . . . they’re cracking like matzos. I feel like doing a fortune. She takes out another deck of cards, lays out a fortune.
LUCILLE: I don’t know, Aunt Rose, is it so smart to let this man live with you?
DORIS: I would never dare! How can you sleep at night with a strange man in the cellar?
FANNY: Nooo! Stanislaus is a gentleman. To Rose: I think he’s a little bit a fairy, isn’t he?
ROSE: I hope!
They all laugh.
For God’s sake, Fanny, play the queen of clubs!
FANNY: How did you know I had the queen of clubs!
ROSE: Because I’m smart, I voted for Herbert Hoover. I see what’s been played, dear, so I figure what’s left.
FANNY, to Grandpa, who continues reading: She’s a marvel, she’s got Grandma’s head.
ROSE: Huh! Look at this fortune.
FANNY: Here, I’m playing. She plays a card.
ROSE, continuing to lay out the fortune: I always feed the vagrants on the porch, but Stanislaus, when I hand him a plate of soup he says he wants to wash the windows before he eats. Before! That I never heard. I nearly fell over. Go ahead, Doris, it’s you.
DORIS, desperately trying to be quick: I know just what to do, wait a minute.
The women freeze, study their cards; Rose now faces front. She is quickly isolated in light.
ROSE: When I went to school we had to sit like soldiers, with backs straight and our hands clasped on the desk; things were supposed to be upright. When the navy came up the Hudson River, you cried it was so beautiful. You even cried when they shot the Czar of Russia. He was also beautiful. President Warren Gamaliel Harding, another beauty. Mayor James J. Walker smiled like an angel, what a nose, and those tiny feet. Richard Whitney, president of the Stock Exchange, a handsome, upright man. I could name a hundred from the rotogravure! Who could know that these upright handsome men would either turn out to be crooks who would land in jail or ignoramuses? What is left to believe? The bathroom. I lock myself in and hold on to the faucets so I shouldn’t scream. At my husband, my mother-in-law, at God knows what until they take me away . . . Returning to the fortune, and with deep anxiety: What the hell did I lay out here? What is this?
Light returns to normal.
DORIS: “Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard.”
ROSE: What?
FANNY, touching her arm worriedly: Why don’t you lie down, Rose? . . .
ROSE: Lie down? . . . Why? To Doris: What Gray’s “Elegy”? What are you . . .
Stanislaus enters rapidly, wearing a waist-length white starched waiter’s jacket, a tray expertly on his shoulder, with glasses and rolled napkins. Rose shows alarm as she lays a card down on the fortune.
STANISLAUS: It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht tonicht—that’s Scotch.
FANNY: How does he get those napkins to stand up!
ROSE, under terrific tension, tears her gaze from the cards she laid out: What’s the jacket suddenly?
The women watch her tensely.
STANISLAUS, saluting: SS Manhattan. Captain’s steward at your service.
ROSE: Will you stop this nightmare? Take the jacket off. What’re you talking about, captain’s steward? Who are you?
STANISLAUS: I was captain’s personal steward, but they’re not sailing the Manhattan anymore. Served J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Enrico Caruso, lousy tipper, Lionel—
ROSE, very suspiciously: Bring in the cookies, please.
He picks up the pitcher to pour the lemonade.
Thank you, I’ll pour it. Go, please.
She doesn’t look at him; he goes out. In the silence she picks up the pitcher, tilts it, but her hand is shaking, and Fanny takes the pitcher.
FANNY: Rose, dear, come upstairs . . .
ROSE: How does he look to you?
FANNY: Why? He looks very nice.
LUCILLE:
He certainly keeps the house beautiful, Aunt Rose, it’s like a ship.
ROSE: He’s a liar, though; anything comes into his head, he says; what am I believing him for? What the hell got into me? You can tell he’s full of shit, and he comes to the door, a perfect stranger, and I let him sleep in the cellar!
LUCILLE: Shhh!
Stanislaus enters with a plate of cookies, in T-shirt again, determinedly.
ROSE: Listen, Stanislaus . . . She stands.
STANISLAUS, senses his imminent dismissal: I go down to the ship chandler store tomorrow, get some special white paint, paint the whole outside the house. I got plenty of credit, don’t cost you.
ROSE: I thought it over, you understand?
STANISLAUS, with a desperate smile: I borrow big ladder from the hardware store. And I gonna make nice curtains for the cellar windows. Taste the lemonade, I learn that in Spanish submarine. Excuse me, gotta clean out the icebox. He gets himself out.
FANNY: I think he’s very sweet, Rose. . . . Here . . . She offers a glass of lemonade.
LUCILLE: Don’t worry about that mortgage man, Aunt Rose, it’s after five, they don’t come after five . . .
ROSE, caught in her uncertainty: He seems sweet to you?
GRANDPA, putting the paper down: What Lee ought to do . . . Rosie?
ROSE: Hah?
GRANDPA: Lee should go to Russia.
The sisters and Lucille turn to him in surprise.
ROSE, incredulous, frightened: To Russia?
GRANDPA: In Russia they need everything; whereas here, y’see, they don’t need anything, so therefore, there’s no work.
ROSE, with an edge of hysteria: Five minutes ago Roosevelt is too radical, and now you’re sending Lee to Russia?
GRANDPA: That’s different. Look what it says here . . . a hundred thousand American people applying for jobs in Russia. Look, it says it. So if Lee would go over there and open up a nice chain of clothing stores—
ROSE: Papa! You’re such a big anti-Communist . . . and you don’t know the government owns everything in Russia?
GRANDPA: Yeah, but not the stores.
ROSE: Of course the stores!
GRANDPA: The stores they own?
ROSE: Yes!
GRANDPA: Them bastards.
ROSE, to Lucille: I’ll go out of my mind here . . .
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 102