Play With a Tiger and Other Plays - Doris Lessing

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a sweet sharp hat – pork-pie, cleft in the middle, set on side. The hat is in dark green. My jacket is two yards wide across the shoulders, nipped in at the waist, and skirted. In a fine, sweet cinnamon brown. Trousers in forest green, very fancy. My shirt is the finest money can buy, one dollar fifty, at Holy Moses Cut Price Emporium. In deciduous mauve. My tie is orange and black in lightening stripes. I wear velveteen spats, buttoned sweetly up the side, in hearth-rug white. I have a key-chain with a key on it, probably about six feet long, which could sweep the pavement if it hung free, but it never does, because we stand, lounging on the street corner, our home, men of the world, twirling the chain between our fingers, hour after hour through the afternoons and evenings. That year I’m a shoe-shine boy, a news-boy and a drug-store assistant. But my life, my real sweet life is on the pavement. [speaking to someone] Jedd, see that broad? [waits for an answer] Gee, some dish, bet she’s hot. [waits again] See that dame there, Jesus Christ. [he wolf-whistles]

      [ANNA swanks, bottom wagging in front of him. DAVE whistles after her. He is echoed by a wolf-whistle from the street. ANNA wheels at the window to shut it.]

      DAVE: I told you, keep it open.

      [ANNA returns, squatting on the edge of the carpet.]

      DAVE: Jesus, Anna, when I think of that kid, of all us kids, it makes me want to cry.

      ANNA: Then cry.

      DAVE: The year of our Lord, 1936, all our parents out of work, and World War II on top of us and we didn’t know it.

      ANNA: Did you carry a knife?

      DAVE: We all did.

      ANNA: Ever use it?

      DAVE: Hell no, I told you, we were fine idealistic kids. That was my anarchist period. We stood twirling our keychains on the corner of the street, eyeing the broads and I quoted great chunks out of Kroptkin to the guys. Anyone who joined my gang had to be an anarchist. When I had my socialist period, they had to be socialists.

      ANNA: Go on.

      DAVE: Isn’t it enough?

      ANNA: I’m waiting for the tomahawk. You’re seven years old and you scalp all the nasty adults who don’t understand you.

      DAVE: OK. I was a Red Indian nine-tenths of my childhood. OK. [in his parody of an English upper-class accent] There is no point whatever in discussing it … OK. Somewhere in my psyche is a tomahawk-twirling Red Indian … Anna? Do you know what’s wrong with America?

      ANNA: Yes.

      DAVE: At the street corners now the kids are not prepared to fight the world. They fight each other. Every one of us, we were prepared to take on the whole world single-handed. Not any longer, they know better, they’re scared. A healthy country has kids, every John Doe of them knowing he can lick the whole world, single-handed. Not any more.

      ANNA: I know.

      DAVE: You know. But you’re scared to talk. Everyone knows but they’re scared to talk. There’s a great dream dead in America. You look at us and see prosperity – and loneliness. Prosperity and men and women in trouble with each other. Prosperity and people wondering what life is for. Prosperity – and conformity. You look at us and you know it’s your turn now. We’ve pioneered the golden road for you …

      ANNA: Who are you lecturing, Anna MacClure?

      DAVE: OK, OK, OK. [he flops face down on the carpet]

      [ANNA puts her arms around his shoulders.]

      DAVE: If you think I’m any safer to touch when I’m flat than when I’m mobile you’re wrong. [He tries to pull her down. She pulls away.] OK. [pause] Did I tell you I went to a psycho-analyst? Yeah, I’m a good American after all, I went to a psycho-analyst.

      ANNA [mocking him]: Do tell me about your psycho-analysis.

      DAVE: Yeah, now I refer, throwing it away, to ‘when I was under psycho-analysis’.

      ANNA: The way you refer, throwing it away, to ‘when I was a car salesman’, which you were for a week.

      DAVE: Why do you always have to cut me down to size?

      ANNA: So, how many times did you go?

      DAVE: Twice.

      [ANNA laughs.]

      DAVE: The first interview was already not a success. Now, doc, I said. I have no wish to discuss my childhood. There is no point whatever in discussing it. I want to know how to live my life, doc. I don’t want you to sit there, nodding while I talk. I want your advice, I said. After all, doc, I said, you’re an educated man, Eton and Oxford, so you told me – throwing it away, of course. So pass on the message, doc, pass it on.

      [ANNA rolls on the carpet, laughing.]

      DAVE: It was no laughing matter. I talked for one hour by the clock, begging and pleading for the favour of one constructive word from him. But he merely sat like this, and then he said: ‘I’ll see you next Thursday, at five o’clock precisely.’ I said, it was no laughing matter – for a whole week I was in a trance, waiting for the ultimate revelation – you know how we all live, waiting for that revelation? Then I danced up to his room and lay on to his couch and lay waiting. He said not a word. Finally I said don’t think I’m resisting you, doc, please don’t think it. Talk doc, I said. Give. Let yourself go. Then the hour was nearly up. I may say, I’d given him a thumb-nail sketch of my life previously. He spoke at last: ‘Tell me, Mr Miller, how many jobs did you say you had had?’ My God, doc, I said, nearly falling over myself in my eagerness to oblige, if I knew, I’d tell you. ‘You would admit,’ he said at last, ‘that the pattern of your life shows, ho, hum, ha, a certain instability?’ My God, yes, doc, I said, panting at his feet, that’s it, you’re on to it, hold fast to it doc, that’s the word, instability. Now give doc, give. Tell me, why is it that a fine upstanding American boy like me, with all the advantages our rich country gives its citizens, why should I be in such trouble. And why should so many of us be in such trouble – I’m not an American for nothing, I’m socially minded, doc. Why are there so many of us in such trouble? Tell me doc. Give. And why should you, Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, citizen of England, be sitting in that chair, in a position to dish out advice and comfort? Of course I know that you got all wrapped up in this thing because you, uh, kind of like people, doc, but after all, to kinda like people doc, puts you in a pretty privileged class for a start – so few citizens can afford to really kinda like people. So tell me doc, tell me …

      ANNA: Well don’t shout at me, I’m not Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey.

      DAVE: You listen just like him – judging. In possession of some truth that’s denied to me.

      ANNA: I’ve always got to be the enemy. You’ve got to have an enemy …

      DAVE: You’re right. I’ve got to have an enemy. Why not? I’m not going to love my brother as myself if he’s not worth it. Nor my sister, if it comes to that – where was I?

      ANNA: Kinda liking people.

      DAVE: There was a sort of thoughtful pause. I waited, biting my nails. Then he said, or drawled. ‘Tell me, just at random now, is there any thing or event or happening that has seemed to you significant. Just to give us something to get our teeth into, Mr Miller?’ Well, doc, I said, just at random, and picking a significant moment from a life full of significant moments, and on principle at that – latch on to that doc, it’s important in our case, that my life has been uninterruptedly full of significant moments … but has yours doc? I want to know? We should talk as equals doc, has your life been as full as mine of significant moments?

      ANNA: Dave, stop boasting.

      DAVE: Hell, Anna. If you love me, it’s because I lived that way, Well? And so. But to pull just one little cat or kitten out of the bag, doc, I would say it was the moment I woke beside a waitress in Minnesota, and she said to me in her sweet measured voice: ‘Honey you’re nuts. Did you know that?’ … Well, to tell the truth, no, I hadn’t known

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