Play With a Tiger and Other Plays

ANNA: Well Dave?

[A fresh burst of fighting from the street. ANNA moves to shut the window, DAVE holds her.]

DAVE: I’m surprised I have to tell you that anything you shut out because you’re scared of it becomes more dangerous.

ANNA: Yes, but I’ve lived longer than you, and I’m tired.

DAVE: That’s a terrible thing to say.

ANNA: I daresay it is.

END OF ACT TWO

Act Three (#ulink_382d4715-aab3-54bb-ae72-805bd2bb4b09)

ANNA and DAVE in the same positions as at the end of Act Two – no time has passed.

ANNA: Yes, I daresay it is.

[She goes to the light, switches it on, the room is closed in.]

ANNA [as she switches on the light]: I must be mad. I keep trying to forget it’s all over. But it is.

[From the moment ANNA says ‘It’s all over’ it is as if she has turned a switch inside herself. She is going inside herself: she has in fact ‘frozen up on him’. This is from self-protection, and DAVE knows it. Of course he knows by now, or half-knows, and still won’t admit to himself, about JANET. But he is trying to get through to ANNA. He really can’t stand it when she freezes up on him. From now until when Mary comes in should be played fast, wild, angry, mocking: they circle around each other, they do not touch each other.]

[ANNA goes straight from the light switch to the record-player, puts on ‘I’m on My Way’, goes to the bottom of her bed, where she kneels, and shuts Dave out by pretending to work on something.]

DAVE [shouting across music]: Anna. I could kill you. [as she ignores him] … come clean, what have you been really doing in the last weeks to get yourself into such a state?

ANNA [shouting]: I’ve been unhappy, I’ve been so unhappy I could have died.

DAVE: Ah come on, baby.

ANNA: But I can’t say that, can I? To say, You made me unhappy, is to unfairly curtail your freedom?

DAVE: But why the hell do you have to be unhappy?

ANNA: Oh quite so. But I didn’t say it. I’ve been sitting here, calm as a rock, playing ‘I’m on My Way.’

DAVE: Why?

ANNA: It would seem I have the soul of a negro singer.

DAVE: Oh Christ. [He turns off the record player.]

ANNA [too late]: Leave it on.

DAVE: No, I want to talk.

ANNA: All right, talk. [He bangs his fist against the wall.] Or shall I ask you what you’ve been doing in the last few weeks to get yourself into such a state?

[A silence.]

ANNA: Well, talk. [conversational] Strange, isn’t it how the soul of Western man – what may be referred to, loosely, as the soul of Western man, is expressed by negro folk music and the dark rhythms of the … [DAVE leaps up, he begins banging with his fists against the wall.] I’m thinking of writing a very profound article about the soul of Western man as expressed by …

DAVE [banging with his fists]: Shut up.

ANNA: I’m talking. Looked at objectively – yes objectively is certainly the word I’m looking for – what could be more remarkable than the fact that the soul of Western man …

DAVE [turning on her]: You have also, since I saw you last, been engaged to marry Tom Lattimer.

ANNA: Don’t tell me you suddenly care?

DAVE: I’m curious.

ANNA [mocking]: I was in lurve. Like you were.

DAVE: You were going to settle down?

ANNA: That’s right, I decided it was time to settle down.

DAVE: If you’re going to get married you might at least get married on some sort of a level.

ANNA: But Dave, the phrase is, settle down. [she bends over, holds her hand a few inches from the floor] It is no accident, surely, that the phrase is settle down. [DAVE stands watching her, banging the side of his fist against the wall.] I’m thinking of writing a short, pithy, but nevertheless profoundly profound article on the unconscious attitude to marriage revealed in our culture by the phrase settle down.

[DAVE lets his fist drop. Leans casually against the wall, watches her ironically.]

DAVE: Anna, I know you too well.

ANNA: An article summing up – how shall I put it – the contemporary reality.

DAVE: I know you too well.

ANNA: But it seems, not well enough … We’re through Dave Miller. We’re washed up. We’re broken off. We’re finished.

DAVE [with simplicity]: But Anna, you love me.

ANNA: It would seem there are more important things than love.

DAVE [angry]: Lust?

ANNA: Lust? What’s that? Why is it I can say anything complicated to you but never anything simple? I can’t say – you made me unhappy. I can’t say – are you sure you’re not making someone else unhappy. So how shall I put it? Well, it has just occurred to me in the last five minutes that when Prometheus was in his cradle it was probably rocked by the well-manicured hand of some stupid little goose whose highest thought was that the thatch on her hut should be better plaited than the thatch on her neighbour’s hut. Well? Is that indirect enough? After all, it is the essence of the myth that the miraculous baby should not be recognized. And so we are both playing our parts nicely. You because you’re convinced it can’t happen to you. Me because I can’t bear to think about it.

DAVE: Anna, you haven’t let that oaf Tom Lattimer make you pregnant.

ANNA: Oh my God. No. I haven’t. No dear Dave, I’m not pregnant. But perhaps I should be?

DAVE: OK Anna, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you unhappy. But – well, here I am Anna.