Seeing Things at Night

THE FAT MAN (very much agitated) – Oh, please don't say that! It isn't true. I'm kind; that's my business. When things get too rotten I'm the only one that can help. They've got to have me. You should hear them sometimes before I come. I'm the one that takes them off battlefields and out of slums and all terribly tired people. I whisper a joke in their ears, and we go away, laughing. We always go away laughing. Everybody sees my joke, it's so good.

THE SICK MAN – What's the joke?

THE FAT MAN – I'll tell it to you later.

Enter the Nurse. She almost runs into the Fat Man, but goes right past without paying any attention. It almost seems as if she cannot see him. She goes to the bedside of the patient.

THE NURSE – So, you're awake. You feel any more comfortable?

The Sick Man continues to stare at the Fat Man, but that worthy animated pantomime indicates that he shall say nothing of his being there. While this is on, the Nurse takes the patient's temperature. She looks at it, seems surprised, and then shakes the thermometer.

THE SICK MAN (eagerly) – I suppose my temperature's way up again, hey? I've been seeing things this afternoon and talking to myself.

THE NURSE – No; your temperature is almost normal.

THE SICK MAN (incredulously) – Almost normal?

THE NURSE – Yes; under a hundred.

She goes out quickly and quietly. The Sick Man turns to his fat friend.

THE SICK MAN – What do you make of that? Less than a hundred. That oughtn't to make me see things; do you think so?

THE FAT MAN – Well, I'd just as soon not be called a thing. Up there I'm called good old Death. Some of the fellows call me Bill. Maybe that's because I'm always due.

THE SICK MAN – Rats! Is that the joke you promised me?

THE FAT MAN (pained beyond measure) – Oh, that was just a little unofficial joke. The joke's not like that. I didn't make up the real one. It wasn't made up at all. It's been growing for years and years. A whole lot of people have had a hand in fixing it up – Aristophanes and Chaucer and Shakespeare, and Mark Twain and Rabelais —

THE SICK MAN – Did that fellow Rabelais get in – up there?

THE FAT MAN – Well, not exactly, but he lives in one of the most accessible parts of the suburb, and we have him up quite often. He's popular on account of his after-dinner stories. What I might call his physical humor is delightfully reminiscent and archaic.

THE SICK MAN – There won't be any bodies, then?

THE FAT MAN – Oh, yes, brand new ones. No tonsils or appendixes, of course. That is, not as a rule. We have to bring in a few tonsils every year to amuse our doctors.

THE SICK MAN – Any shows?

THE FAT MAN – I should say so. Lots of 'em, and all hits. In fact, we've never had a failure (provocatively). Now, what do you think is the best show you ever saw?

THE SICK MAN (reminiscently) – Well, just about the best show I ever saw was a piece called "Fair and Warmer," but, of course, you wouldn't have that.

THE FAT MAN – Of course, we have. The fellow before last wanted that.

THE SICK MAN (truculently) – I'll bet you haven't got the original company.

THE FAT MAN (apologetically) – No, but we expect to get most of them by and by. Nell Gwyn does pretty well in the lead just now.

THE SICK MAN (shocked) – Did she get in?

THE FAT MAN – No, but Rabelais sees her home after the show. We don't think so much of "Fair and Warmer." That might be a good show for New York, but it doesn't class with us. It isn't funny enough.

THE SICK MAN (with rising interest) – Do you mean to say you've got funnier shows than "Fair and Warmer"?

THE FAT MAN – We certainly have. Why, it can't begin to touch that thing of Shaw's called "Ah, There, Annie!"

THE SICK MAN – What Shaw's that?

THE FAT MAN – Regular Shaw.

THE SICK MAN – A lot of things must have been happening since I got sick. I hadn't heard he was dead. At that I always thought that vegetable truck was unhealthy.

THE FAT MAN – He isn't dead.

THE SICK MAN – Well, how about this "Ah, There, Annie!"? He never wrote that show down here.

THE FAT MAN – But he will.

THE SICK MAN (enormously impressed) – Do you get shows there before we have them in New York?

THE FAT MAN – I tell you we get them before they're written.

THE SICK MAN (indignantly) – How can you do that?

THE FAT MAN – I wish you wouldn't ask me. The answer's awfully complicated. You've got to know a lot of higher math. Wait and ask Euclid about it. We don't have any past and future, you know. None of that nuisance about keeping shall and will straight.

THE SICK MAN – Well, I must say that's quite a stunt. You get shows before they're written.

THE FAT MAN – More than that. We get some that never do get written. Take that one of Ibsen's now, "Merry Christmas" —

THE SICK MAN (fretfully) – Ibsen?

THE FAT MAN – Yes, it's a beautiful, sentimental little fairy story with a ghost for the hero. Ibsen just thought about it and never had the nerve to go through with it. He was scared people would kid him, but thinking things makes them so with us.

THE SICK MAN – Then I'd think a sixty-six round Van Cortlandt for myself.

THE FAT MAN – You could do that. But why Van Cortlandt? We've got much better greens on our course. It's a beauty. Seven thousand yards long and I've made it in fifty-four.

THE SICK MAN (suspiciously) – Did you hole out on every green or just estimate?

THE FAT MAN (stiffly) – The score is duly attested. I might add that it was possible because I drove more than four hundred yards on nine of the eighteen holes.

THE SICK MAN – More than four hundred yards? How did you do that?

THE FAT MAN – It must have been the climate, or (thoughtfully) it may be because I wanted so much to drive over four hundred yards on those holes.

THE SICK MAN (with just a shade of scorn) – So that's the trick. I guess nobody'd ever beat me on that course; I'd just want the ball in the hole in one every time.