Play With a Tiger and Other Plays. Doris Lessing

the street, how would you imagine him?

      ANNA: Superwoman.

      DAVE: Oh OK.

      ANNA [in despair]: Me.

      DAVE: I know. I know it. Me too. I sit and think and think – because if we don’t know what we want to grow into, how can we shape ourselves better? So I concentrate until my brain is sizzling, and who comes in through the door – me!

      ANNA: Just once it wasn’t me.

      DAVE [excited]: Who?

      ANNA: I was sitting here, like this. I was thinking – if we can’t breed something better than we are, we’ve had it, the human race has had it. And then, suddenly …

      DAVE: What?

      ANNA: He walked in, twitching his tail. An enormous, glossy padding tiger. The thing was, I wasn’t at all surprised. Well tiger, I said, and who do you belong to?

      DAVE [furious]: Anna, a tiger walks in here, and all you can say is, wild beast, whose label is around your neck?

      ANNA: I thought you wanted to know.

      DAVE: Go on.

      ANNA: The tiger came straight towards me. Hullo tiger, I said, have you escaped from the zoo?

      DAVE [mocking]: Of course he’s escaped from the zoo. He couldn’t be a wild tiger, could he?

      ANNA [she kneels, talking to the tiger]: Tiger, tiger, come here. [she fondles the tiger] Tiger, tiger – The tiger purred so loud that the sound drowned the noise of the traffic. And then suddenly – [ANNA starts back, clutching at her arms.] He lashed out, I was covered with blood. Tiger, I said, what’s that for … he backed away, snarling.

      [ANNA is now on her feet, after the tiger.]

      DAVE [very excited]: Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it.

      ANNA: He jumped on to my bed and crouched there, lashing his tail. But tiger, I said, I haven’t done anything to you, have I?

      DAVE [furious]: Why didn’t you offer him a saucer of milk? Kitty, kitty, have a nice saucer of milk?

      ANNA [beside the bed, trying to hold the tiger]: Tiger, don’t go away. But he stared and he glared, and then he was off – down he leaped and out into the street, and off he padded with his yellow eyes gleaming into the shadows of Earls Court. Then I heard the keepers shouting after him and wheeling along a great cage … [She comes back opposite DAVE.] That was the best I could do. I tried hard, but that was the best – a tiger. And I’m covered with scars.

      DAVE [gently]: Anna.

      [They kneel, foreheads touching, hands together.]

      [The telephone starts ringing.]

      DAVE: Answer it.

      ANNA: No.

      DAVE: Is it Tom?

      ANNA: Of course it isn’t Tom.

      DAVE: Then who?

      ANNA: Don’t you really know?

      [She goes to answer telephone, it stops ringing. She stands a moment. Then turns to him, fast.]

      ANNA: Love me Dave, Love me Dave. Now.

      [DAVE rolls her on to the carpet. They roll over and over together. Suddenly she breaks free and begins to laugh.]

      DAVE: What’s so funny?

      ANNA [kneeling up, mocking]: I’ll tell you what’s funny, Dave Miller. We sit here, tearing ourselves to bits trying to imagine something beautiful and new – but suppose the future is a nice little American college girl all hygienic and virginal and respectable with a baby in her arms. Suppose the baby is what we’re waiting for – a nice, well-fed, well-educated, psycho-analysed superman …

      DAVE: Anna, please stop it.

      ANNA: But imagine. Anything can come in – tigers, unicorns, monsters, the human being so beautiful he will send all of us into the dust-can. But what does come in is a nice, anxious little girl from Philadelphia.

      DAVE: Well Anna?

      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

      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: