(no subject)
And finally, part three...
H: Yes. That. Whose is that?
W: Now bear with me, darling. On these nights while you're in the cellar, and while this good woman is preparing herself for your return, I go off with a real Negro. There it is. In a nutshell. His Cadillac pulls up quietly in front. He flashes his lights. And I sneak out and drive off with him into the black ghetto. There, on an old mattress infested with lice, nibbled at by rats, we make love. Love which for the first time in my life I can give myself up to, since I feel that with him I am expiating not only my own guilt but the guilt of all America.
H: I see. And so he is the father of that.
W: No.
H: No?
W: Somehow, even that relationship wasn't enough. Somehow, in the ghetto, with all that soul music pulsing around me, all that frustration, all that anger, I still felt as if I were not playing my part. So I betrayed my lover for his friend. And his friend for another. And so on and so forth, with Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, and Indians on relief. Oh, darling, for the past five years, I've been offering myself as an ecstatic white sacrifice to anyone with an income of less than five thousand...
H: And so the father is...
W: Social Injustice, on a large and general scale.
H: I see.
W: And now you'll leave me, won't you/
H: Me? Leave you now? (Laughs peculiarly) I want to stay more than ever. (Cleans his pipe carefully) What would you say...if I said...that everything you've told me...excites me?
W: Excites you?
H: Sets my blood boiling. Gives me strange, wild frissons of desire....What would you say if I said that your ghetto experiences have lit a lurid light in my own loins?
W: Really?
H: (Still cleaning his pipe; not looking at her)What would you say...if I said...that I suddenly want to excercise - how shall I put it?- a droit de seigneur on you? That I want to steal you from the peasants and carry you into my bedroom and ravage you with the reading lights going full blaze? (Looks at her carefully) What would you say if I said that? (Pause: she looks at him coyly.)
W: I'd say...do it.
H: Mmmmmm.
W: (Hastily) And let me add this: Let me add that a woman, too, is capable of weird desires. This is hard to say, but looking at you now, slouched in that chair, surrounded by your books and papers, I suddenly have the strange urge to experience the stale comforts of bourgeois married love. They say that Americans in Paris, surfeited by rich food, yearn for the simple hamburger. So it is with me. For you. Tonight.
H: (Getting up slowly) Then...
W: (Backing away from him) But there's still this! (Indicating her stomach.) This problem!
H: (Moving towards her) That's no problem.
W: No problem?
H: That's just the premise to the problem. Now we've solved the problem, we no longer need the premise.
W: I fail to follow.
H: That's just the starting mechanism. Now the motor's going, we no longer need the starter.
W: (Looking at her stomach) Oh.
H: (Stalking her) That's not really a baby you have in there.
W: (Backing away) Not really a baby?
H: No. That's a balloon you have in there.
W: A balloon?
H: A balloon. Or a bladder. Or an old beach ball.
W: It's a baby. I'm practically positive.
H: No, no. Look. I'll show you. (Takes the pointed metal prong of his pipe cleaner and gives her a quick, neat jab in the stomach.) Touche! (There is a pop, and then a hissing sound. She slowly deflates. They both watch.) You see? The problem was simply academic. (Pause)
W: (Looking at him sheepishly.)Aren't we awful?
H: (Going to his chair, closing his book, carefully marking the place) You started it.
W: I know. It was my turn. You started the last one.
H: (Neatening his books and papers) Well, it's fun.
W: Shouldn't we see a psychiatrist?
H: (Tapping out his pipe; putting his glasses in his glasses case.) Why? We're happy. (Turns off his light. The stage is now lit only from a light off left.)
W: But we're so depraved! (He looks at her, then throws back his head, and gives a long Tarzan-like whoop; then he pounds his chest like a gorilla; she giggles) Quiet! You'll wake the children! (He picks her up in his arms; she pummels him melodramatically; speaks in an English accent.) No, Tarzan! White men do not take women by force! No, Tarzan! White men court their women! They are civilizaed, Tarzan. It's very complicated. Do you understand what I am saying? Com-pli-cat-ed...Com-pli....(She giggles and kicks as he carries her off left.)