Play With a Tiger and Other Plays - Doris Lessing

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I happened to be at the time, writing scripts for our film industry. Then I heard he was a stool pigeon for the FBI. No, don’t look like that doc, don’t – very distasteful, I’ll admit, but the world’s a rough place. Half his patients were int-ell-ectuals, and Reds and Pinks, since intellectuals so often tend to be, and after every couch session, he was moseying off to the FBI with information. Now, doc, here’s an American and essentially socially-minded, I want an answer, in this great country, England, I can come to you with perfect confidence that you won’t go trotting off to the MI5, to inform them that during my communist period I was a communist. That is, before I was expelled from that institution for hinting that Stalin had his weak moments. I tend to shoot off my mouth, doc. A weakness, I know, but I know that you won’t, and that gives me a profound feeling of security.

      ANNA: Dave, you’re nuts.

      DAVE: So said the waitress in Minnesota. Say it often enough and I’ll believe it.

      ANNA: So what did Dr Cooper-Anstey say?

      DAVE: He lightly, oh so lightly, touched his fingertips together, and he drawled: ‘Tell me Mr Miller, how many women have you had?’

      [ANNA laughs.]

      DAVE: Hey doc, I said, I was talking seriously. I was talking about the comparative states of liberty in my country and in yours. He said: ‘Mr Miller, don’t evade my question.’

      [ANNA laughs.]

      DAVE: OK doc, if you’re going to be a small-minded … but let’s leave the statistics, doc. I’m pretty well schooled in this psycho-analysis bit, I said, all my fine stable well integrated friends have been through your mill. And so I know that if I pulled out a notebook full of statistics, you’d think I was pretty sick – you may think it careless of me, doc, but I don’t know how many women I’ve had. But Mr Miller, he drawled, you must have some idea? Well, at this point I see that this particular morale-builder is not for me. Tell me, Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, I said, how many women have you had?

      [ANNA rolls, laughing.]

      DAVE: Hey, Anna, this is serious girl. A serious matter … hey, ho, he was mad, was Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey sore. He sat himself up to his full height, and he told me in tones of severe displeasure, that I was an adolescent. Yeah, doc, I said, we Americans are all children, we’re all adolescent, we know that. But I wanted to know – how many women have you had doc? Because we have to talk man to man, doc, adolescent or not. There’s got to be some sort of equality around this place, I said. After all, I said, one woman is not like another doc, believe me, if you’ve slept with one woman you’ve not slept with them all and don’t you think it. And besides, doc, I said, you’re an Englishman. That is not without relevance. Because, judging from my researches into this field, Englishmen don’t like women very much. So English women complain. So they murmur in the dark night watches with their arms gratefully around the stranger’s neck. Now I like women doc, I like them. The point is, do you? He laughed. Like this [DAVE gives a high whinnying laugh] But I persisted. I said, doc, do you like your wife? And what is more important, does she like you? Does she, doc? And so.

      ANNA: And so?

      DAVE: And so he kicked me out, with all the dignity an upperclass Englishman brings to such matters. In tones frozen with good taste, he said, ‘Mr Miller, you know how to find your own way out, I think.’

      ANNA: It’s all very well.

      DAVE: [mimicking her] It’s all very well, don’t freeze up on me Anna, I won’t have it. [a pause] Anna, he did vouchsafe me with two little bits of information from the heights of integration. One. He said I couldn’t go on like this. I said, that’s right, that’s why I’ve come to you. And two. He said I should get married, have two well-spaced children and a settled job. Ah, doc, now you’re at the hub of the thing. What job, I said? Because I’ll let you into a secret. What’s wrong with all of us is not that our mummies and daddies weren’t nice to us it’s that we don’t believe the work we do is important. Oh, I know I’m earnest, doc, I’m pompous and earnest – but I need work that makes me feel I’m contributing. So doc, give – I’m a man of a hundred talents, none of them outstanding. But I have one thing, doc, just one important thing – if I spend eight hours a day working, I need to know that men, women and children are benefiting by my work. So … What job shall I do. Tell me.

      ANNA: So?

      DAVE: He said I should get any job that would enable me to keep a wife and two children, and in this way I would be integrated into society. [he flings himself down on the carpet] Anna, for God’s sake, Anna.

      ANNA: Don’t ask me.

      DAVE: Why not? I can’t ask Dr Anstey. Because the significant moment I keep coming back to he wouldn’t see at all. It wasn’t the moment I decided to leave America. I drove right across the States, looking up all my friends, the kids who’d been world-challengers with me. They were all married. Some of them were divorced, of course, but that’s merely an incident in the process of being married. They all had houses, cars, jobs, families. They were not pleased to see me – they knew I was still unintegrated. I asked each one a simple question. Hey, man, I said, this great country of ours, it’s in no too healthy a state. What are we going to do about it? And do you know what they said?

      ANNA: Don’t rock the boat.

      DAVE: You’ve got it in one, kid. But I had one ace up my sleeve. There was my old buddy, Jedd. He’ll still be right in there, fighting. So I walked into his apartment where he was sitting with his brand new second wife. There was a nervous silence. Then he said: Are you successful yet, Dave? And so I took the first boat over.

      ANNA: And the wife and the two well-spaced kids?

      DAVE: You know I can’t get married. You know that if I could I’d marry you. And perhaps I should marry you. How about it?

      ANNA: No. The wedding would be the last I’d see of you – you’d be off across the world like a dog with a fire-cracker tied to its tail.

      DAVE: I know. So I can’t get married. [a pause] Why don’t you just trap me into it? Perhaps I need simply to be tied down?

      ANNA: No.

      DAVE: Why not?

      ANNA: Any man I have stays with me, voluntarily, because he wants to, without ties.

      DAVE: Your bloody pride is more important to you than what I need.

      ANNA: Don’t beat me up.

      DAVE: I will if I want. You’re my woman so if I feel like beating you up I will. And you can fight back … Anna what are you being enigmatic about? All the time, there’s something in the air, that’s not being said. What is it?

      ANNA: Not being said, I keep trying. Don’t you really know.

      DAVE [in a panic]: No. What?

      ANNA: If I told you, you’d say I was just imagining it. All right, I’ll try again, Janet Stevens.

      DAVE [furious]: You’re a monomaniac. Janet Stevens. Do you imagine that a nice little middle-class girl, whose poppa’s sort of sub-manager for an insurance company, do you imagine she can mean anything to me?

      ANNA: Oh my God, Dave.

      DAVE: You’re crazy. It’s you that’s crazy.

      ANNA: Dave, while you’re banging and crashing about the world, playing this role and that role, filling your life full of significant moments – there are other people in the world … hell, what’s the use of talking to you. [a pause] As a matter of interest, and this is a purely abstract question, suppose you married Janet Stevens, what would you have to do?

      DAVE: Anna, are you crazy? Can you see me? God help me, I’m a member of that ever-increasing and honourable company, the world’s ex-patriates. Like you, Anna.

      ANNA: Oh, all right.

      DAVE: How the hell could I marry her? She wouldn’t under-stand a word I ever said, for a start.

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