by David Hare
M’Bengue John Matshikiza
Script Girl Kate Saunders
Make-up Girl Judith Hepburn
Propman Lilla Towner-Jones
Paul Tim Charrington
1st Waiter Bhasker
2nd Waiter Andrew Johnson
3rd Waiter Nizwar Karanj
Diplomats Brian Spink, Jeremy Anthony, Niven Boyd
Boom Operator Bill Moody
Sound Recordist Robert Phillips
Directed by David Hare
Designed by Hayden Griffin
Music by Nick Bicât
Lighting by Rory Dempster
Act One
SCENE ONE. A hotel lounge. Crumbling grandeur. Cane chairs. A great expanse of black and white checked floor stretching back into the distance. Porticos. Windows at the back and, to one side, oak doors. But the scene must only be sketched in, not realistically complete.
Stephen is sitting alone, surrounded by international newspapers, which he is reading. He is in his late twenties, but still boyish: tall, thin, dry. He is wearing seersucker trousers, and his jacket is over the chair. He has a now-emptied glass of beer and a bottle beside him. He is English.
Elaine comes through the oak doors, sheets of Gestetnered material in her hand. She is about thirty-five, disarmingly smart and well dressed. Her elegance seems not at all ruffled by the heat. She is a black American.
Elaine The heat.
Stephen I know.
Elaine goes to the back to look in vain for a waiter.
Are they still talking?
Elaine Yes.
Stephen Ah.
Elaine The Senegalese delegate is just about to start. (She wanders back down, nodding at one of his magazines.) Is that Newsweek?
Stephen Yes. There’s nothing about us. (He has picked it up and now reads from it.) ‘Tracy Underling of Dayton, Ohio, has the rest of her downtown, largely Catholic Santa Maria College class in thrall with the size of her exceptional IQ, which local psycho-expert Lorne Schlitz claims tops genius level at 175. Says the bearded Schlitz: “Proof of her abundant intelligence is that she has already begun writing her third novel at the age of five.” Subject of the novel will be the life of Mary Tyler Moore …’
Elaine smiles and walks away.
Elaine America!
Stephen I mean, who actually writes this stuff?
Elaine Is it any worse than ours?
Stephen smiles slightly.
That M’Bengue is appalling.
Stephen Who?
Elaine The Senegalese. He’s raising his third point of order.
Stephen It’s a compulsion …
Elaine Yes.
Stephen … I’m afraid.
Elaine, at the back, has a sudden burst of impatience.
Elaine Why are there no waiters?
Stephen Because the bar is nowhere near the lounge. In India no bar is anywhere near any lounge in order that five people may be employed to go backwards and forwards between where the drinkers are and where the drink is. Thus the creation of four unnecessary jobs. Thus the creation of what is called a high-labour economy. Thus low wages. Thus the perpetuation of poverty. Thus going screaming out of your head at the incredible obstinacy of the people. (He shouts.) Waiter!
Elaine You’ll get used to it.
Stephen looks across at Elaine who has sat down and is flicking through a magazine. But she seems unconcerned.
Stephen I had a friend who rang me and said, ‘Is your hotel in a bad area?’ I said, ‘Well, quite bad.’ She said, ‘Does it have corpses?’ I said, ‘Well, no.’ She said, ‘Well, mine actually has corpses.’ And she was right. When I went to see her, there are people who sleep on the pavement … who have failed to wake … who are just lying there with rats running over them …
Elaine Bombay’s quite prosperous.
Stephen I know. I know. It’s a thriving, commercial city of two million people. Only there happen to be seven million people living there, which leaves the extra five million looking pretty stupid every night.
Elaine All right.
Stephen Well.
Elaine If you want to make a speech, go and give it in there.
He looks across at her. She has gone back to reading.
Stephen I would if I could be heard among the clamour of voices. Is there not something ludicrous in holding an international conference on poverty in these spectacular surroundings, when all we would actually have to do is to take one step into the street to see exactly what the problems of poverty are?
Elaine Most of the delegates have.
Stephen Then why is their interest entirely in striking attitudes and making procedural points?
Elaine Because that’s politics.
Stephen You accept that?
Elaine Of course.
Stephen (his voice rising) When even now out in the streets …
Elaine It’s the dirt that disgusts you, that’s all.
Stephen What?
Elaine has put her magazine aside, suddenly deciding to take him on.
Elaine I’ve watched you the last couple of days …
Stephen I see.
Elaine … since we met. You’re like everyone. You can’t understand why the peasants should choose to leave the countryside, where they can die a nice clean death from starvation, to come and grub around in the filthy gutter, where they do, however, have some small chance of life.
Stephen That’s not quite true.
Elaine It shocks you that people prefer to live in cardboard, they prefer to live in excrement, in filth, than go back and die on the land. But they do. And as you want drama, and as this is your third day in India …
Stephen Fourth.
Elaine … you’re determined to find this bad. Because you come from the West and are absolutely set on having an experience, so you find it necessary to dramatize. You come absolutely determined in advance to find India shocking, and so you can’t see that underneath it all there is a great deal about the life here which isn’t too bad. (She turns back. Quietly) At least, if you’d covered Vietnam, that’s how you’d feel.
Stephen looks at her for a moment.
Stephen No, well, of course, I’m not an old hand …
Elaine No.
Stephen I don’t move in your elevated circles. The élite of foreign correspondents …
Elaine Quite.
Stephen I’m just a journalist from England on a literary left-wing magazine …
Elaine That’s right.
Stephen I’ve never filed stories under fire, or got the natives to shoot my copy in fluted arrows through the jungle, so of course I don’t have your lofty overview …
Elaine It’s just that I can’t stand to listen to people making value judgements about other people’s ways of life. The hippopotamus may be perfectly happy in the mud.
Stephen And the Indian, I suppose you think, is perfectly happy rolling about in excrement.
Elaine No, I didn’t say that.
Stephen Well.
Elaine But it is arrogant to look at the world …
Stephen I’m not.
Elaine … through one particular perspective …
Stephen All right.
Elaine … which is always to say ‘This is like the West. This is not like the West.’ What arrogance!
Stephen No, well, I can’t see that …
Elaine If I may say … I’m sorry. God, this conference.
Stephen I know.
There is a pause.
Waiter!
Elaine smiles.
It makes you so ill-tempered. You think you’ll go for a stroll. ‘I wouldn’t leave the hotel if I were you, sir,’ they say. ‘The monsoon is coming.’ With a great grin appearing on their faces as if the thought of it just suited them fine. ‘Ah, good, the monsoon.’ And you caught in it the best of all. I suppose it’s the only revenge the poor have, that their land is uninhabitable by anyone but themselves. That we can’t drink their water, or eat their food, or walk i
n their streets without getting mobbed, or endure their weather, or even, in fact, if we are truthful, contemplate their lives …
Elaine Stephen … (She smiles.) You exaggerate again.
At the opposite side to the conference hall Victor Mehta has appeared. He is in his early forties. He is wearing a light brown suit and tie and he has thick black hair. He is an Indian, but his manners are distinctly European.
Mehta This is UNESCO?
Stephen Yes. The conference on poverty.
Mehta Ah. (He turns at once and summons a white-coated boy from off-stage.) Waiter.
Waiter Sahib?
Mehta Can you see my bags are taken to my room?
Waiter Boy!
Stephen Ah, you found a waiter.
Mehta Certainly. There is no problem, is there?
Two Waiters appear. They argue with the First Waiter in Hindi. The First Waiter dismisses them. Mehta turns back to the Waiter.
And bring me a bottle of white wine. Is there a Pouilly Fuissé?
Waiter Pouilly Fumé, sir.
Mehta Then I will drink champagne.
The Waiter goes. The three of them stand a moment. A chilly smile from Mehta.
So. Off the plane I enjoy refreshments. Will you join me?
Stephen Of course. But I think they may be expecting you in the conference.
Mehta Let them wait.
Stephen is a little surprised, then hastens to introduce Elaine, at whom Mehta is staring.
Stephen I see. Well goodness. This is Elaine le Fanu from CBS Network.
Elaine Very nice to meet you.
Mehta My pleasure.
Stephen Stephen Andrews.
Mehta And somehow I sense you are a journalist as well.
Stephen I work on a small left-wing magazine.
Mehta Yes. I can imagine.
Stephen Mostly it’s reviews. And domestic politics. But I’m the youngest, so my brief is the world.
He smiles. There is a pause.
You’re very hard on journalists in your books.
Mehta I? (He thinks about this a moment, as if it had never occurred to him.) No.
Stephen The Vermin Class. It’s not a flattering title for a novel on our profession.
Mehta I’m sure Miss le Fanu is not vermin. (He is looking straight at Elaine, the sustained stare of the philanderer.)
Stephen No.
Elaine Have you come far?
Mehta I left Heathrow ten hours ago. I left Shropshire –
Elaine Ah, your home?
Mehta Yes – even earlier.
Stephen You’re speaking tomorrow?
Mehta Yes. A chore. The necessary prostitution of the intellect. So much is demanded now of the writer which is not writing, which is not the work. The work alone ought to be sufficient. But my publishers plead with me to make myself seen.
Stephen I think you’ll find there’s great anticipation. I mean, there’s some interest as to what you’ll say.
Mehta looks away, indifferent.
Particularly the comparison with China. It’s impossible here not to compare the two cultures …
Mehta Yes?
Stephen I mean, the way the one, China, is so organized, the other, India, so … well, this is a theme you have dealt with in your books.
Mehta I suppose.
He is still for a moment, lizard-like. Just as Stephen starts again, he interrupts.
Stephen If …
Mehta Of the Chinese leadership the only one I was able to bring myself to admire wholeheartedly was Chou En-lai.
Elaine Ah.
Mehta Because he alone among the leaders had the iron self-control not to use his position to publish his own poetry. Chairman Mao, unhappily, not so.
Elaine Yes. (She smiles, looks down at the ground, knowingly, having dealt with many such men.) Do you not admire Mao?
Mehta How can I? Like so many senior statesmen he ruined his credibility by marrying an actress. And what an actress! Madame Mao even claims that she was born beautiful but that in order to identify more closely with the majority of her people, she has managed to will herself ugly. So that even the hideous awfulness of her face is to be marked down as a revolutionary achievement!
Stephen is frowning.
Stephen But there are elements of China …
Mehta What?
Stephen … elements of the Chinese experiment you admire.
Mehta I admire nothing in the experiment. I admire China itself.
As he speaks, waiters enter in rough formation carrying, one by one, a bucket, a bottle, a bag of ice, and glasses.
Ah, champagne.
As he speaks, the glasses are distributed, the bucket set down.
All old civilizations are superior to younger ones. That is why I have been happiest in Shropshire. They are less subject to crazes. In younger countries there is no culture. The civilization is shallow. Nothing takes root. Even now gangs of crazy youths are sweeping through the streets of Sydney and New York pretending they are homosexual. But do you think they are homosexual really? Of course not. It is the merest fashion. City fashion, that is all. In the old countries, in Paris, in London, when there is a stupid craze, only one person in fifty is affected, but in the young countries there is nothing to hold people back. It is suddenly like the worm factory, everybody fucks everybody, until the next craze, and then everyone will move on and forget and settle down with young women who sell handbags. But meanwhile the damage has been done. The plant has been pulled up at the root and violently plunged back into the earth, so the slow process of growing must begin again. But a worthwhile civilization takes two thousand years to grow.
The waiters have left. Mehta leans forward to pour himself champagne.
Stephen Yes, but … (He gestures at the bottle.) May I? Surely –
Mehta has taken one sip and puts his glass aside, where he leaves it, untouched.
Mehta It is not good.
Stephen Surely there’s a problem, if what you say is true?
Stephen has got up to pour out a glass for himself and Elaine.
Do you say to those young countries, to so many countries represented in that room, countries with no traditions, no institutions, no civilization as we know it, no old ways of ordering themselves – what do you say! ‘Sorry, things will take time … it may be bloody in your country at first, but this is an inevitable phase in a young civilization. You must endure dictatorship and bloodshed and barbarity …
Elaine Mr Mehta wasn’t saying that.
Stephen … because you are young. There is nothing we can do for you.’
Elaine This is …
Stephen No, surely not! They must be helped!
Mehta Nobody can help.
Stephen What do you mean?
Mehta Except by example. By what one is. One is civilized. One is cultured. One is rational. That is how you help other people to live.
He smiles at Elaine, as if only she will understand. Stephen is staring in disbelief.
Stephen You mean you are saying … even as someone reaches up to you to be fed …
Elaine That isn’t …
Mehta If I may …
Stephen ‘Oh, no I can’t fill your bowl …
Elaine Stephen …
Stephen … but I would – please – do – like you to admire my civilization: the cut of my suit!’
Mehta is smiling at Elaine, to say he can deal with this.
Mehta What can you do, he proceeds by parody.
Stephen No.
Elaine Stephen’s …
Stephen No. What you are saying …
Elaine (with sudden violence) Mr Mehta has written about this.
There is a pause. Stephen walks a long way upstage. Pauses. Turns. Walks back down. Picks the bottle out and pours himself another glass. Sits down again. Then Mehta speaks very calmly.
Mehta It is true that it is hard … it is hard to help the poor. Young men like you, who have left the universities, find this sort of talk eas
y, just as any woman may make a group of men feel guilty with feminist ideas – how easy it is, at dinner tables, to make all the men feel bad, how we do not do our share, how we do not care for their cunts, how their orgasms are not of the right kind, how this, how that, this piece of neglect, this wrong thinking or that – so it is with you, you young men of Europe. You make us all uncomfortable by saying ‘The poor! The poor!’ But the poor are a convenience only, a prop you use to express your own discontent. Which is with yourself.
There is a pause.
(darkly) I have known many men like you.
Elaine is slightly shocked by Mehta’s cruelty. But suddenly he seems to relax again.
The subject was not the poor. I was not speaking of them. The subject was Australia, and why Barry is suddenly in the bed of Bruce. Do you have views on that?
Stephen No.
Mehta No. Because there is no political explanation, so it bores you.
Stephen Did I say?
Mehta I know you. I know it from your look. (He turns away, shaking his head.) Politics. It is the disease. Narrow politics. That old bastard Marx …
Stephen Well …
Mehta The inflammation of the intellect among the young, the distortion. Every idea crammed through this tiny ideology, everything crammed through the eye of Marxism. Tssh! What nonsense it all is. (He turns back to Stephen. Definitively) Socialism, a luxury of the wealthy. To the poor, a suicidal creed. (Then he gets up, smiling pleasantly, as if the day’s work were done.) Well, I am tired of arguing …
Stephen Actually, you haven’t argued at all.
Mehta What do you mean?
Elaine Stephen.
Stephen I don’t call what he does arguing at all. You’ve attributed to me various views which you say I hold – on what evidence, I have no idea. Marx you mention. I didn’t mention him, or universities, or what I’m supposed to think about the poor. I’ve said nothing. It was you who dragged it in, just as you dragged in all that peculiar and rather distasteful talk about women’s orgasms – something, I must say, I rather gather from your books you have the utmost difficulty in coming to terms with …
Mehta (inflamed) Ah, now I see!
Stephen Yes!
Mehta Underneath all the talk …
Stephen Yes!
Mehta … all the apparent concern for the poor, now we have the true thing, what we really want to say, what he really has to say: he has read my books! And of course he must hurt me.