Play With a Tiger and Other Plays - Doris Lessing

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coloured fish down there – not cod, and halibut and Dover sole and good British herring, but the poisonous coloured fish of Paradise.

      ANNA: Cod. Halibut. Dover Sole. Good British herring.

      DAVE: Ah, Jesus, you’ve got the soul of a little housewife from Brixton.

      ANNA [leaping up and switching on the lights]: Or from Philadelphia. Well let me tell you Dave Miller, any little housewife from Brixton or Philadelphia could tell you what’s wrong with you.

      DAVE [mocking]: Tell me baby.

      ANNA: You are America, the America you’ve sold your soul to – do you know what she is?

      DAVE [mocking]: No baby, tell me what she is.

      ANNA: She’s that terrible woman in your comic papers – a great masculine broad-shouldered narrow-hipped black-booted blonde beastess, with a whip in one hand and a revolver in the other. And that’s why you’re running, she’s after you, Dave Miller, as she’s after every male American I’ve ever met. I bet you even see the Statue of Liberty with great black thigh-boots and a pencilled moustache – the frigid tyrant, the frigid goddess.

      DAVE [mocking]: But she’s never frigid for me, baby. [he does his little mocking dance]

      ANNA: God’s gift to women, Dave Miller.

      DAVE: That’s right, that’s right baby.

      ANNA: And have you ever thought what happens to them – the waitress in Minnesota, the farmer’s wife in Nebraska, the club-hostess in Detroit? Dave Miller descends for one night, a gift from God, and leaves the next day. ‘Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,’ she cries, ‘stay with me baby.’ ‘I can’t baby, my destiny waits’ – your destiny being the waitress in the next drive-in café. [she is now dancing around him] And why don’t you stay, or don’t you know? It’s because you’re scared. Because if you stay, she might turn into the jackbooted whip-handling tyrant.

      DAVE: No. I’m not going to take the responsibility for you. That’s what you want, like every woman I’ve ever known. That I should say, I love you baby and …

      ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

      DAVE: I love you, honey.

      ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

      DAVE: I love you, doll.

      ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

      DAVE: I love you – but that’s the signal for you to curl up and resign your soul to me. You want me to be responsible for you.

      ANNA: You’ll never be responsible for anyone. [flat] One day you’ll learn that when you say I love you baby it means something.

      DAVE: Well, everything’s running true to form – I haven’t been back a couple of hours but the knives are out and the tom-toms beating for the sex-war.

      ANNA: It’s the only clean war left. It’s the only war that won’t destroy us all. That’s why we are fighting it.

      DAVE: Sometimes I think you really hate me, Anna.

      ANNA [mocking]: Really? Sometimes I think I’ve never hated anyone so much in all my life. A good clean emotion hate is. I hate you.

      DAVE: Good, then I hate you.

      ANNA: Good, then get out, go away. [She wheels to the window, looks out. He goes to where his duffle bag is, picks it up, drops it, and in the same circling movement turns to face her as she says] I hate you because you never let me rest.

      DAVE: So love is rest? The cosy corner, the little nook?

      ANNA: Sometimes it ought to be.

      DAVE: Sometimes it is.

      ANNA: Ha! With you! You exhaust me. You take me to every extreme, all the time, I’m never allowed any half-measures.

      DAVE: You haven’t got any.

      ANNA: Ah, hell. [she flings her shoes at him, one after the other. He dodges them, jumps to the bed, crouches on it, patting it]

      DAVE: Truce, baby, truce …

      ANNA [mocking him]: You’re going to love me, baby, warm-hearted and sweet? Oh you’re a good lay baby, I’d never say you weren’t.

      [The sound of screechings and fighting from the street. ANNA is about to slam the window down, stops on a look from DAVE.]

      ANNA: Last night the four of them were scratching each other and pulling each other’s hair while a group of fly-by-night men stood and watched and laughed their heads off. Nothing funnier, is there, than women fighting?

      DAVE: Sure, breaks up the trade union for a bit … [this is black and aggressive – she reacts away from him. He looks at her, grimaces] Hell, Anna.

      [He goes fast to the mirror, studies the black cloth.]

      DAVE: What’s the pall for?

      ANNA: I don’t like my face.

      DAVE: Why not?

      ANNA: It wears too well.

      DAVE: You must be hard-up for complaints against life …

      [looking closely at her] You really are in pieces, aren’t you? You mean you went out and bought this specially?

      ANNA: That’s right.

      DAVE: Uh-huh – when?

      ANNA: When we quarrelled last time – finally, if you remember?

      DAVE: Uh-huh. Why really, come clean?

      ANNA: It would seem to suit my situation.

      DAVE: Uh-huh … [he suddenly whips off the cloth and drapes it round his shoulders like a kind of jaunty cloak, or cape. Talking into the mirror, in angry, mocking self-parody] Hey there, Dave Miller, is that you, man? [in a Southern accent] Yes, Ma’am, and you have a pretty place around here. Mind if I stay a-while? Yeah, I sure do like your way of doing things … [accent of the Mid-West] Hi, babe, and what’ve you got fixed for tonight? Yes, this is the prettiest place I’ve seen for many a day … [in English] Why, hullo, how are you? [he crashes his fist into the mirror]

      [ANNA, watching him, slowly comes from window as he talks, first crouches on the carpet, then collapses face down – she puts her hands over her ears, then takes them away.]

      DAVE [into mirror]: Dave Miller? David Abraham Miller? No reply. No one at home. Anna, do you know what I’m scared of? One of these fine days I’ll look in the glass, expecting to see a fine earnest ethical young … and there’ll be nothing there. Then, slowly, a small dark stain will appear on the glass, it will slowly take form and … Anna, I want to be a good man. I want to be a good man.

      ANNA [for herself]: I know.

      [But he has already recovered. He comes to her, pulls her up to sit by him.]

      DAVE: If that God of theirs ever dishes out any medals to us, what’ll it be for?

      ANNA: No medals for us.

      DAVE: Yes, for trying. For going on. For keeping the doors open.

      ANNA: Open for what?

      DAVE: You know. Because if there’s anything new in the world anywhere, any new thought, or new way of living, we’ll be ready to hear the first whisper of it. When Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, imagines God, how does he imagine him?

      ANNA: As Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, two sizes larger.

      DAVE: But we’ve got to do better. Anna look – the walls are down, and anyone or anything can come in. Now imagine off the street comes an entirely new and beautiful phenomenon, a new human being.

      ANNA: Jewish boy – you’re a good Jewish boy after all waiting for the Messiah.

      DAVE:

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