Play With a Tiger and Other Plays. Doris Lessing

I’ll try.

      [She very slowly gets to her feet, stands concentrating.]

      DAVE: That’s right. Now, who are you?

      

      END OF ACT ONE

       Act Two

      [ANNA and DAVE, in the same positions as at the end of Act One. No time has passed. The lights are out. The walls seemed to have vanished, so that the room seems part of the street. There is a silence. A lorry roars]

      DAVE: Who are you?

      ANNA [in English]: Anna Freeman.

      DAVE: OK. Go, then.

      [A silence.]

      ANNA: I can’t. I’m all in pieces.

      DAVE: Then go back. Who are you now?

      ANNA [she slowly stands up, at the edge of the carpet]: Anna.

      DAVE: Anna who?

      ANNA [in Australian]: Anna MacClure from Brisbane [in English] The trouble is, she gets further and further away. She’s someone else. I know if she goes altogether then I’m done for. [a pause] [in Australian] The smell of petrol. In a broken-down old jalopy – six of us. It’s night. There’s a great shining moon. We’ve been dancing. I’m with Jack. We’ve stopped at the edge of the road by a petrol pump. All the others are singing and shouting and the petrol pump attendant’s angry as a cross cat. Jack says, ‘Anna, let’s get married.’ [Speaking to JACK] ‘No, Jack, what’s all this about, getting married. I want to live, Jack. I want to travel. I want to see the world … Yes, I know, but I don’t want kids yet. I don’t want … ’ [to DAVE] He says, ‘Anna you’ll be unhappy. I feel it in my bones, you’ll be unhappy.’ [she talks back to JACK] ‘I don’t care, I tell you. I know if I marry you, you’ll be for the rest of my life. You aren’t the world Jack … All right, then I’ll be unhappy. But I want a choice. Don’t you see, I want a choice.’ [she crouches down, her hands over her face] Let’s have the lights Dave.

      DAVE: Wait. Go back some more – that’s not Anna MacClure the Australian. That’s Anna MacClure who’s already half in Europe.

      ANNA: But it’s so hard.

      DAVE: Breathe slowly and go. Who are you?

      ANNA [slowly standing] [in a child’s voice, Australian]: Anna MacClure.

      DAVE: Where?

      ANNA: On the porch of our house. I’ve quarrelled with my mother. [she stands talking to her mother] I’m not going to be like you, ma, I’m not, I’m not. You’re stuck here, you never think of anything but me and my brother and the house. You’re old ma, you’re stupid. [listening while her mother lectures her] Yah, I don’t care. When I grow up I’m never going to be married, I’m not going to get old and dull. I’m going to live with my brother on an island and swim and catch fish and … [she sings] The moon is in my windowpane, the moon is in my bed, I’ll race the moon across the sky and eat it for my bread. I don’t care, ma, I don’t care … [She dances a blithe, defiant dance. In English] Dave, Dave, did you see? That was just like you.

      [DAVE gets up and does his blithe defiant dance beside her on the carpet. He mocks her. ANNA furious, leaps over and smacks him.]

      ANNA: ‘There, stupid child, you’re wicked and stupid you’re not going to defy me, so you think you’ll defy me … ’

      [They both at the same moment crouch down in their former positions on either side of the carpet.]

      ANNA: Let me have the light on now, please Dave.

      [DAVE switches it on, the room becomes the room again. DAVE returns to where he was.]

      DAVE [patting the carpet beside him]: Anna.

      ANNA: No.

      DAVE: Let me love you.

      ANNA: No.

      DAVE [laughing and confident]: You will, Anna, so why not now?

      ANNA: You’ll never love me again, never never never.

      DAVE [suddenly scared]: Why not? Why not?

      ANNA: You know why.

      DAVE: I swear I don’t.

      ANNA: What am I going to be without you, what shall I do?

      DAVE: But baby, I’m here.

      ANNA: And what are you going to do with Janet?

      DAVE: Janet?

      ANNA: Janet Stephens, from Philadelphia.

      DAVE: What about her?

      ANNA: You don’t know her, of course.

      DAVE: She’s a friend of mine, that’s all.

      ANNA: Do you know Dave, if I walked into your room and found you in bed with a girl and said Dave, who is that girl, you’d say what girl? I don’t see any girl, it’s just your sordid imagination.

      DAVE: Some time you’ve got to learn to trust me.

      ANNA: What you mean by trust is, you tell me some bloody silly lie and I just nod my head and smile.

      DAVE [inside the wild man]: That’s right baby, you should just nod your head and smile.

      ANNA: You mean, it’s got nothing to do with me.

      DAVE: That’s right, it’s got nothing to do with you.

      [ANNA withdraws from him into herself.]

      DAVE: Ah hell, Anna, she means nothing to me.

      ANNA: Then it’s terrible.

      [A pause.]

      DAVE: I don’t understand why I do the things I do. I go moseying along, paying my way and liking myself pretty well, then I’m sounding off like something, and people start looking at me in a certain way, and I think, Hey, man is that you? Is that you there, Dave Miller? He’s taken over again, the wild man, the mad man. And I even stand on one side and watch pretty awed when you come to think of it. Yes, awed, that’s the word. You should be awed too, Anna, instead of getting scared. I can’t stand it when you’re scared of me.

      ANNA: I simply want to run out of the way.

      DAVE: The way of what? Go on, tell, I want to know.

      ANNA: I want to hide from the flick-knives, from the tomahawks.

      DAVE [with a loud, cruel laugh – he is momentarily inside the wild man]: Jesus. Bloody Englishwoman, middle-class lady, that’s what you are. [mimicking her], Flick-knives and tomahawks – how refined.

      ANNA [in the voice of ANNA MACCLURE]: Dave, man, stand up and let it go, let it go.

      [DAVE slowly stands. He switches off the light – the walls vanish, the city comes up. Back on the carpet, stands relaxed.]

      ANNA: Who are you?

      DAVE: Dave Miller, the boss of the gang, South Street, Al Capone’s territory … Chicago.

      ANNA: What’s your name?

      DAVE: Dave Miller.

      ANNA: No, in your fantasy.

      DAVE: Baby Face Nelson. No, but the way I dreamed him up, he was a sort of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

      ANNA: Oh, don’t be so childish.

      DAVE: That was the point of this exercise I thought.

      ANNA: