Людмила Ансельм - Короткие пьесы
PETER (bored): How do you think they could meet?
JOSH: He met with her in a secret corner. a corridor, or a storeroom..
PETER: Risky, less fun.
(Josh starts to straighten the rug under the table and chairs. Then he quickly straightens up while kneading his back, and screwing up his face in pain)
JOSH: Please try to straighten the rug.
(Peter starts to straighten the rug. He bends down. Josh slips in Peter’s back. Peter squeezes away, and straightens up with fear)
PETER (shouts): You gay?… Unbelievable!
JOSH (calmly): I wanted to show you how this could happen. It could be over in three or four minutes.
PETER (voice raised, still upset): Maybe you could explain in words. Like they…
JOSH: An easy visual aid. Despite the dangers the relationship continued. He had several children by Sally. I think he expended great effort to keep Sally near him. Who knows, maybe his secret gave rise for the Declaration’s words: “..all men…pursuit their… Happiness.” It’s self deluding and corrosive to excessively pursue happiness. Jefferson even modified his earlier progressive stand against slavery as he grew older and more jaundiced.
PETER: It’s really not important now why he wrote these words. It’s important that these words inspired millions of immigrants to work hard, live better, and make America NUMBER ONE in the world.
JOSH: Well, think, America is not entirely first. It is 49th in literacy, 37th in universal health care, and 41st in child mortality. So where is the American myth?
PETER: Fuck your statistics! He deceived us, and his ideas worked out well at first. But now, it has been carried too far when more efficiency, overtime, and moving families from place to place have become necessary.
JOSH: Your American dream is now riding on the backs of the poor bringing health, education, and riches to only a few. You all ignore a pervasive stink in America.
PETER: Are you “Green Party”?
JOSH: It’s not the worst of all parties in the world, but Lenin had high ideals too. Do you really still believe that if you pursue happiness you can become happy?
PETER: I believe..
JOSH: You will never get there. To pursue “happiness” is the wrong goal. Pursue work that you love, be kind, helpful, and reliable and unexpectedly happiness arrives.
PETER: You are a philosopher. You have time to sit and think of all possibilities. I don’t have time to think about all your fantasies and nobody else has the time..
JOSH: Yes, I have a lot of time. Now are discussions whether or not the “American Dream” is “erosing”. Already most Americans do not believe in the “American Dream” for the future. So I decided to try to analyze our situation and find something that must change. I started to write this tract…
(Peter with hands up demurring, hands saying stop)
PETER: Wrong, wrong! Why are you doing this?
JOSH: I confess that I was trying to raise a few doubts.
PETER: Doubts…?
(Pause)
JOSH: So I’ve seen the seeds of doubt!
PETER: You’re crazy! I was too shy to say at earlier. You were so insistent.
JOSH: So you don’t understand anything!
PETER: Why it’s so important to raise doubts
JOSH: From doubts we think…learn…and act. Columbus doubted that the world was flat.
PETER: Doubts then are your main problem.
(Suddenly Peter’s, now fully charged cell, bursts into the tinkling tones of a summer “Good Humor” ice cream truck (Steven Foster’s “Old Folks at Home”…way down upon the Swanee river…. Or “Home on the Range”.))
PETER: Finally! Thank God! Excuse me I have to go.
JOSH: One last request!…….We will not talk about the future, but now, current day, are you happy?
(Pause)
PETER: But truthfully I’m too busy to ponder whether I’m happy or not happy!
JOSH: I thought so. You should go now.
(Peter collects his phone and charger and walks to the door where he stops and returns to Josh)
PETER: Maybe I didn’t understand, but before leaving my advice to you is don’t try to change things. Don’t shut your light, get phone… Live and enjoy America!
JOSH (waffling his hand) Good byе! Be happy, if you… Could..
THE END
INNER VOICE
DOCTOR – psychiatrist. Doctor male. Wearing an expensive suit, and wrist watch very proper, polite, confident, pleasant, and always composed.
ANNA – Woman. Dressed in red dress with red bag. Foreign accent.
PLACE:Psychiatrist’s office.Sparse Psychiatrist’s office. Ever present small clock standing on a table. The doctor is talking on the telephone eating a sandwich and thumbing thru a magazine. Suddenly a door opens and Anna rushes in.
ANNA: Doctor, I’m Anne Miller. I made an appointment last week..
DOCTOR (looking at а small clocks): You’re unusually early… (to telephone.) No, it’s not to you…
ANNA: Doctor, you must listen to me… now… My inner voice…
DOCTOR: Just a minute, I’m talking on the phone…
ANNA: Doctor, I can’t stand it…
DOCTOR: Wait, wait…(to telephone.) Sorry, Gladys I have to hang up… Yes! I’ll call you later… Bye!
ANNA: Doctor, you must listen to me…
(Doctor puts down the telephone unwillingly.)
DOCTOR: What is it Anna, that brings you in so early? Have you taken your medicine?
ANNA (ignoring Doctor): The TV just said that the scientists have identified the gene that makes people lonely.
Anna comes in, throws her purse on the table so as to obscure the small tablet clock from the doctor’s view and flops down in a chair opposite the doctor.
DOCTOR: Yes.
ANNA: I want the gene therapy medicine.
Doctor smiles pleasantly and turns to Anna.
DOCTOR: Yes, try to relax, what’s the problem?
ANNA: I can’t go out side my house. I’m hurting deep down in my soul, – ‘I feel a desperation. I’m lonely.
DOCTOR: Are you are living alone? Have you called your mother lately?
ANNA (ignore Doctor): Since I came here to the US. I feel so lonely. You can hardly imagine how hard it is to be lonely.
Doctor moves her purse so he can see the small tablet clock.
ANNA: Take that clock away!
DOCTOR: That’s not very polite… Take your purse away…
Anna takes away her purse in such a way that the tablet clock falls on the floor.
ANNA: Doctor… I…, I…
DOCTOR: Very well, go on.
Doctor glances at his wrist watch.
ANNA: My loneliness is special. I’m like the Liberty Statue: I’m standing alone, and life is boiling around me: people fall in love, go to theaters, restaurants, and I have nobody to go out with. Because no one needs me, I feel desperate and very frightened. I think about doing something drastic actions that could end badly for me.
DOCTOR: Now, now,what do you mean?
ANNA: When I see a couple, a man and a woman, walking along the street, holding hands and showing how good they feel together, I hate them, and I don’t know what to do in order not to see them… I even stopped visiting the Zoo.
Doctor: The Zoo…
ANNA: I don’t want to see almost all animals, even the most thorough predators, sharing a cage together… Especially on holidays and Sundays I literally climb up the wall… When I get up, I immediately remember how lonely I am, and all my thoughts are oriented on how to find somebody… Sometimes I can behave unexpectedly, crazy.
DOCTOR: For example? (glancing at his magazine again).
Anna jumps up and throws the magazine away.
ANNA: Enough of your “Playboy”…
DOCTOR: (Defensively) It isn’t “Playboy”. It was…
ANNA: Especially…
Doctor smiles pleasantly and puts his magazine on the floor.
ANNA: For example, when I go out into the street, I find, it easiest to start conversations with men, and then I talk on and on…
DOCTOR: Do they answer?
ANNA: Yes, they do, and we go along together for a while, then we part…
DOCTOR: And then you part… Your behavior can be interpreted in the wrong way.
ANNA: And they interpret… in the wrong way. It happens in different ways.
DOCTOR: You know this behavior is dangerous.
ANNA: Once I was so scared when a passer-by who I was going along with grabbed my hand, clasped it to his chest and begged: «Come with me, darling!» I could hardly escape from him. On the way home my inner voice used foul language:”You’re a fool, coward. Why didn’t you go with him? It would was your chance? Serves you right.» I ran away because the man looked odd. He was holding my hand, but his eyes were roaming, looking, from side to side.
DOCTOR: You’re telling me that you walk in the streets, and, at the same time, you insist that you can’t leave the house. Let’s get closer to your problem.
ANNA: That’s exactly what I’m doing. So, after the divorce with my husband, I moved into a new house, looked around. It turned out, a single man was living just across from my house. So, I settled down in my new house and started watching him thru the window. I even have made up a biography for him.
DOCTOR: I don’t need his biography, get to the point.
ANNA: I’m just getting to it. I sometimes had walks in front of his house in order to attract his attention. I tried to sell him Girl Scout Cookies, I collected for the United Fund, but he ignored me. Finally, I decided to invite him to my place for a cup of tea. Can you imagine the state of my mind?
DOCTOR: Yes, I can. Did he come?
ANNA: Yes, he came, spick and span: a bow tie a sport jacket, flannel pants… Tall, handsome – I could hardly stand on my feet. He told me that his name was Joe. I was so excited that couldn’t even say to him: “Joe come in, be seated». The words stuck in my throat. He came into the living room, anyhow, sat on the sofa next to me, and started talking. First he spoke about the weather, then passed over to his dog. Then little by little Joe told me about his travels, how many countries he had been to, what he had seen there. Do you know what impressed me greatly in his stories?
DOCTOR: (pensively.) Go on, go on…
ANNA: Doctor, I can see that you’re not interested in what I’m telling you.
DOCTOR: Go on.
ANNA: I want to emphasize that all I’m telling you is very important.
DOCTOR: What do you think made the greatest impression on you?
ANNA: The most amazing thing is that Joe had traveled in many different countries but told me mainly about the countries where he visited nudist beaches. I believe that there’s no nudist beach in the whole world that he had not visited.
DOCTOR: (with some interest.) Nude beaches!
ANNA: There’re lots of them.
DOCTOR: Oh?…
ANNA: Is it important?
DOCTOR: No, it’s not important… For instance?
ANNA: I remember only – on Martha’s Vineyard and on the island of St. Martin. Unfortunately, I can’t remember others.
DOCTOR: (With more and more interest) So? Go on…
ANNA: So, we were sitting and talking. I was going to invite him to the table when he suddenly got up and said: «I’ll leave you for five minutes to have a smoke». I said to him: «Joe, you may smoke in here,». And he replied: “I can’t smoke in your the room. It’ll take me exactly five minutes». And he went out. He left and came back in five minutes. And then he suddenly rushed out of my house and ran across the street to his own house and since then I can’t go out into the street.
DOCTOR:(with wonder.) I can’t understand what happened to your neighbor?
ANNA: Happened to me, not to him. But, please, don’t laugh at me.
DOCTOR: I won’t laugh.
ANNA: The point is when Joe was going out to have a smoke he cast a long and significant glance at me as if he wanted to explain something. I trembled with excitement. And it was then that my inner voice said: «Strip off your clothes». It said this so distinctly and clearly as I’m speaking to you now. Then repeated insistently, in the form of an order: «Be quick, off with clothes, he’ll soon come back». I decided to cover my body with a sheet, but the voice said: «Risk it, take the sheet away». Then, when I took it away, it said: «Lie down on the sofa and look as if you were lying on a nude beach».
DOCTOR: Your pose?
ANNA (demonstrating): I simply put my hands behind my head…
DOCTOR: Why?
ANNA (looking at doctor): You don’t understand? I wanted to show my breasts to advantage…
