The Traveling Companion & Other Plays Read online

  MAN: I wish you could see the sweetness of this little Japanese girl: She packs my clothes like she was dressing a child.

  WOMAN: Yeah. Talk about tricks, they know them! [She picks up a phone.] May I have some tea, please? Strong tea, not the green tea, the strong tea. Do you understand me? Strong tea, I want the strong tea. [She says the Japanese word for it and hangs up.] Koi kōcha3 [Then she comes downstage and speaks to the audience.] Packing up, is he? Shit! Where is he going? He’s going nowhere without me: I have him, I’ve always had him where the hair’s short and he knows it. Not as well as I know it but he knows it. We’ve been together eleven years, nearly twelve. About him I know everything; about me, he knows nothing! —Except my body which I can still hold him by. By which I’ve always held him. I belong to an old Mediterranean race and he’s a sort of blond mongrel: a little Welsh wildness, a lot of Puritan English, and a big hunk of German sentiment, mostly self-pity. —A mess! —However he can still pass himself off as an artist, and sell it. [She laughs conspiratorially to the audience.] —At prices in four figures. Oh, his work was worth it till he pushed it too far and it turned on him like a tiger and started to tear him down. But that’s his bag, mine’s protecting my interests. I’ll have to play my cards right. That I can do. That’s the kind of knowledge I was born with. Sometimes I have to figure the next best move. This time I think the next best move is not to move at all. Just have my tea and—

  [The Oriental enters in the part of a waiter, bearing a china tea service.]

  WOMAN: —Thank you.

  [She signs the bill. The Oriental bows and withdraws.]

  WOMAN: You know what happened to him? When he was a little boy he practiced the little boy’s vice: masturbation. His mother caught him at it. She said that it made God mad, that it made Mama mad and it made God mad and he didn’t want to make God and Mama mad, did he? —That’s how it started, like that . . . She said that God would punish him and Mama would punish him, too. He loved Mama and he loved God so he stopped it. He didn’t want to be punished so he stopped it. But he wanted it. So he got mad at Mama and God, he began to hate Mama and God and disregard their wishes. The Puritan pattern! —Of guilt. And then atonement. Guilt and atonement, atonement and guilt. —It’s inescapable, he will never escape it, and so he won’t escape me. In a minute he’s going to open that door and come in to beg my forgiveness. —I’ll have to go to bed with him to express my forgiveness and Mama’s and God’s . . . —How would you like to live with something like that? Pretty messy, some drag! —Oh, well, that’s life. The disgusting thing is that he can still think it’s love.

  [The woman drinks her tea. The Japanese maid completes the packing and the man gives her a tip.]

  MAN: Sayonara!

  WOMAN [derisively]: Sayonara! —Shit. —Been here six months and the only word he knows he got from a movie title . . . —When he started painting with a spray gun I knew he was finished. I don’t know what I am but I’m glad I’m not an artist. —Started painting with a spray gun and has to get drunk to do it! —Sayonara! Shit! —Slobbery son of a—Spray gun . . .

  [The man starts slashing the canvas to pieces with his palette knife.]

  WOMAN: —Now what? Cutting up his canvas! —Doesn’t have the guts to cut his throat. [She turns to the door and shouts]: WHY DON’T YOU CUT YOUR THROAT? [Pause. She turns back again to the audience and says wryly] —No answer. —I’ve got no legal position. Goddamn atheist but claims he can’t get divorced from his wife because he’s Catholic and she’s insane. —I have no legal position after eleven years with him.

  [The man falls back from the slashed canvas. He cries convulsively into his hands, stumbling about drunkenly with crazed gestures. He falls, at last, to the floor.]

  WOMAN: —Now what?

  [After a moment, the man staggers to his feet again and moves toward the door in the partition. He tilts his head attentively for any sound in the adjoining room.]

  WOMAN [in a whisper]: Yes, here he comes, he’s about to come in, now.

  [The woman takes a stool downstage and sits on it, waiting calmly for the man’s surrender. He opens the door like a sneak-thief. He has put on his black Japanese kimono and slippers. Now he enters. In the room with her, he has the manner of an Oriental servant. Quietly, almost stealthily, he picks up the other stool, pads softly downstage with it, and sets it next to hers. They sit side by side in grave silence. The Second Stage Assistant enters the set. He opens a sliding glass panel in the upstage wall to reveal a formal painting of a tree in flower. There is soft Kabuki music. The Second Stage Assistant removes an artificial flower from his black sleeve and puts it in a delicate vase. Deferentially crouched, he places this pale, delicate, and sorrowful flower of reconciliation between and just before their two stools. Then he returns, walking backwards in the formal attitude of an Oriental servant. The man extends his hand toward the woman. She appears not to notice this gesture. He nudges her arm with his fingers. With a long sigh, she closes her eyes and extends her hand to the cup of his hand. Their hands clasp.

  Their facial expressions are almost the same: They are like two children in school, asked the same question that neither of them can answer.

  And so the calcium glare dims out and . . .]

  THE CURTAIN COMES DOWN

  1pronounced: toe-yó-geen (ed.)

  2pronounced: ó-te-tsoo-dye (ed.)

  3pronounced: coy-kó-cha (ed.)

  SCENE TWO

  The Second Stage Assistant opens the panel in the back wall, this time exposing the round red disk of the risen sun. The hard white calcium glare floods the scene again. There is a distorted musical mimicry of morning sounds: birds waking and cocks crowing.

  The woman suddenly springs out of the tumbled bed sheets. She wears flesh-colored tights with anatomical details painted on in colors. Her body is triumphantly alive: it proclaims how she took the man in the night and mastered his nerve-shattered body. She performs a kind of narcissistic dance before a tall narrow mirror that the Second Stage Assistant brings to her. She clasps her hands on her belly, her breasts, her buttocks, with total appreciation. Suitable music plays. Then she throws back the crumpled sheet that contains the man, exposing his body in skin-fitting tights. She grins triumphantly at the audience, pointing at his figleaf, her eyes as open and shining as the risen sun. Timpani is played. The man starts up and meets her merciless glare and pointing finger.

  MAN: What?

  WOMAN: What?

  MAN: I thought you just said something. [He draws the sheet up over his body with shame and sorrow.]

  WOMAN: What’s there to say?

  MAN: We mustn’t fight anymore. It leaves me so exhausted I can’t make love.

  WOMAN: The last time we had sex you said to me afterwards, I don’t know if that was love-making or hate-making.

  MAN: Well, last night—

  WOMAN: Let’s don’t talk about last night.

  MAN: When the work goes better the sex will go better, too.

  WOMAN: I think we’d better lay off the sex until the work goes better, if you are right about that. We’d better wait till the work starts going better, without the spray-gun.

  [The man sighs and crawls out of bed. The Oriental enters.]

  ORIENTAL: I am sure that you already understand what happened between them last night: this poor young middle-aged man doesn’t understand about death of body and spirit and all he can do is to make these panicky, hopeless efforts to show himself he’s not dying by trying to sleep with this woman. Lately these efforts have all been unsuccessful, just as lately his efforts to paint a new, powerful picture have all been abortive till finally, lately, he has started using a spray-gun on his canvas instead of paint brushes. He has turned Japanese very suddenly. I mean that he is prepared to kill himself now. He is going to do it; at least he’s going to attempt it. The idea hasn’t occurred to him
yet, this morning, but this is possibly the last day of his life. They’re dressing together in silence, absolute silence, and neither one of them is quite sure what they are thinking or feeling but certainly the woman is the one in power. She seems ruthless but let’s regard her fairly. Objectively and fairly. She has a beautiful body and he has enjoyed it greatly —Till lately. And it’s perfectly true that she has no legal position with this man. And this man is humanly selfish. So is she. And who knows which is more so? The only obvious thing is that she is in the ascendancy and he is bereft of all power. Look how he puts his clothes on, in comparison to the way she dresses. She dresses with assurance, knowing precisely what she wants to put on, and doing it with a quick, sure animal grace, while he wonders and fumbles. Yes, I think it’s the last morning of his life. And see the way he looks at her, those wistful side-long glances. Looking at her, he gets a slight erection, even now, his last morning, remembering all the past pleasures of her submitting flesh and the young sweetness of it. Perhaps I was wrong in saying that he is Japanese. I think I should have said that his fate, his situation, is Japanese. Our suicide rate is the highest in the world. [He gives some statistics.] —It’s particularly popular among our creative artists. We seem to have a gift for it. He doesn’t have that gift. He will probably do it today but he won’t do it respectably. He will not do it with dignity, but he will almost certainly do it unless the woman forgets that she has no legal position in his life enough to want to save him. I see no sign of that coming. No. Her face is unrelenting: a Mediterranean face. I suppose a Mediterranean body as perfect as hers must have that kind of face to sit like a stern chaperone, well, not so much a chaperone as a Madam. The body of a beautiful whore, the face of a relentlessly practical Madam, guardian of the body, procurer of its users, no, bargainer with the users, the face was combined somehow with the face of the frightened cashier facing the bandit’s revolver. You see what I mean? — [He rises from the straight chair, which is removed by the Second Stage Assistant.] I could have explained things better if one of our suicidal young writers had been on the script. Good morning!

  [He bows and goes off. The man and the woman are now dressed.]

  MAN: Let’s have lunch together. Where shall we have lunch together?

  [The woman doesn’t answer; she is applying her make-up.]

  MAN: Shall we have lunch at the Imperial, in the new building of the Imperial?

  WOMAN: You’re not going to work today?

  MAN: I’ll stop for lunch, if I do.

  WOMAN: I’m not going to have lunch today.

  MAN: Why not?

  WOMAN: You said I was putting on weight, so I’m cutting out lunches so I can take the weight off. —Having no legal position in your life, I have to please you, don’t I?

  MAN: I wish you’d forget about the legal position. You keep saying that to me, you’ve got no legal position.

  WOMAN: Because I haven’t. Have I?

  MAN: We’ve been together for eleven years. I would have married you the first month if I’d been free to, Sweetheart. Can I change the law forbidding a man to divorce an insane wife? So he can marry the woman he loves and lives with?

  WOMAN: I’m not and have never been anxious to be married to you. However I would like to have a legal position in return for the eleven years I’ve given you out of my life. In which I could have made a very good life of my own, with independence, with self-respect, with a little happiness, even.

  MAN: We’ve had good years together. Eleven! We’ve given each other great freedom. It’s only this last year when I’ve been under such strain as you can’t imagine that things have gone wrong between us. Don’t judge our life by this last awful year.

  WOMAN: Have you ever considered the situation that I would find myself in if something happened to you?

  MAN: If what happened to me?

  WOMAN: If you killed yourself, for instance, like you keep threatening to?

  MAN: I’ve —I’m —Perfectly willing —To leave you all my new work, I mean to make out a will leaving all my new work to you! Call a lawyer, get a lawyer up here, we’ll make out a legal document, now, today! —Leaving you all my work, everything that’s unsold.

  WOMAN: Thank you. —Suppose it’s worthless?

  MAN: Do you think it’s worthless?

  WOMAN: How do you feel about it?

  MAN: I think I’m— breaking new ground, I’m— breaking new ground, I’m—

  WOMAN [coolly]: You’re rationalizing.

  [He stares at her helplessly as she receives a phone message on a slip of paper, presented to her on a saucer, with a bow, by the Second Stage Assistant.]

  MAN: For me?

  WOMAN: For me. [She continues making up. A Stage Assistant trots up with another saucer of messages.]

  MAN: For me?

  WOMAN: For me.

  MAN: All three?

  WOMAN: No, all four. [She has completed her make-up. She starts out.]

  MAN: Where are you going?

  WOMAN [coolly calling back to him]: I’m going to have my tea downstairs.

  MAN: Then come back up, don’t leave me alone all day!

  WOMAN [calling back]: After my tea I’m going to The Ginzah.

  MAN [shouting after her]: Meet me at the Imperial for lunch?

  [She is offstage. Her answer is indistinct but negative.]

  MAN: What? What?

  [He gets no answer. He shuffles back to where she has dropped the crumpled slips of paper. Picks them up, one by one, unfolds them, crumples them and drops them again. The Second Stage Assistant opens the upstage panel on a line-drawing of a grotesque Cothurnus. The Oriental, serving as Chorus, has entered discreetly and announces—]

  ORIENTAL: The Tragic Muse—of self-pity! The mask of masochism . . . . Hideous? Because ridiculous! To achieve anything respectable in our dark and oblique eyes, he will have to rise above this.

  [The man rises, brokenly.]

  ORIENTAL: He has risen, physically.

  [The man sobs.]

  ORIENTAL: But is still crouching in spirit. Our history, our culture, has given us a deeply inborn contempt of spiritual crouchers. Even as a defeated nation, with the highest suicide rate in the world, we have only appeared to crouch. Our art, our culture, is hard and erect and fiercely, proudly cruel. I suppose this play is really about the difference between the Oriental and Occidental forms of self-destruction. We consider ours more dignified. Committed for practical, not for romantic, reasons. The Kamikaze planes in World War Two? Proud, not masochistic! —and practical. Necessary. The Orient means rising, where the sun rises. Watch us, we will rise! Our flag asserts our faith in it . . . . Excuse me please. There is to be some more action.

  [The Oriental retreats to the wings. Light is brought up on the man.]

  MAN: Where are they, where did they go, the images, the visions?

  [A Stage Assistant opens the panel again to reveal an abstract design of birds in flight.]

  MAN: —They say if you wait for them, they’ll come back. —Sometime, by something or someone, something was broken in me and to repair the break I used a—what? —imitation of—what? —a frantically and fiercely aggressive imitation of a pride I could only feel under liquor and drugs, and out of this I —created, attempted to—create. Consequently, what am I ? A painter, now, with a spray gun.

  [A Stage Assistant rushes up to him with the spray-gun.]

  MAN: The paid-for wisdom and kindness of a doctor that said rest, rest! —It will come back, meaning they would come back, the visions, the images, and the power to paint them on canvas with something more orderly than this— [He accepts spray-gun from a Stage Assistant.] —Spray-gun . . . [He clasps violent hands to either side of his head.] Images! —Come Back! [He turns about, giggling crazily, and whistling for them (his lost visions) as if they were dogs.] I think I could do it today, I think I could
really do it!

  [On this line, a Stage Assistant rushes in to him with a small table; sets on it a large brown bottle and a tumbler. A toneless offstage voice says— “LYYY! —SOLLL!”]

  MAN: Luck fails and the light goes out: no candles, no matches. —What then? The steady going along with each morning and a day and night? —No, I think I really can do it, this time! But now, right now, or never!

  [He rushes to the table and drains the bottle of Lysol. It cuts him like a fire in his mouth, throat, and belly. He gags and crouches over. A Stage Assistant jerks a string that releases from the ceiling a paper transparency on which is a line-drawing of the woman’s lovely nude body. It falls in front of the man. Percussive music. After a few moments, the man stumbles through the thin paper. Instantly the Stage Assistant lowers another paper transparency on which the woman’s body is projected still larger. The man breaks through the second piece of paper. Then the Stage Assistant lowers another large tissue rectangle on which the woman’s body is three times larger than life-size.

  The percussion is augmented by wind instruments, grotesquely lyrical and mocking.

  It takes some moments longer for the man to crash through this third projection, and when he does, he’s dying. He has his hand in his mouth to gag his cry, and his teeth have drawn blood. The percussion is still building. The man collapses onto his knees and now he tries to cry out but hasn’t the breath. He crumples: dies.

  An abrupt stillness.

  A circle of light is focused on the forestage on a small table at which the woman is seated. She is incomparably cool and in command of herself and her ambiance at first appearance, but this impression is soon dissipated by the interior monologue which follows. It is accompanied by the soft sounds of a monsoon wind. She is in a bar on The Ginzah: the street is represented by vividly painted strips of ideographs which flutter in the keen wind with a rustling that comes and goes, serving as punctuation to her interior remarks.]