A Streetcar Named Desire
Don’t holler at me like that.
He heaves the package at her. She cries out in protest but manages to catch it.
Her appearance is incongruous to this setting…looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district.
Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light…there is something about her… that suggests a moth.
A great big place with white columns.
She pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down.
Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare.
She is shaking all over and panting for breath…the bottle nearly slips from her grasp.
Now don’t get worried, your sister hasn’t turned into a drunkard.
What are you doing in a place like this?// Why, that you had to live in these conditions!
You’re all I’ve got in the world, and you’re not glad to see me!
No, one’s my limit.
You haven’t said a word about my appearance.
Daylight never exposed so total a ruin!
Stella, you have a maid, don’t you?...What? Two rooms, did you say?
You know I haven’t put on one ounce in ten years, Stella?
You see I still have that awful vanity about my looks even now that my looks are slipping! [She laughs nervously and glances at Stella for reassurance] …[dutifully] They haven’t slipped one particle.
Polacks?...Heterogeneous types?
I can’t be alone! Because, as you must have noticed, I’m not very well [Her voice drops and her look is frightened]
Try not to-well-compare him with men that we went out with at home.
Such as his civilian background!
I can hardly stand it when he is away for a night…When he’s away for a week I nearly go wild!...And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby.
You left! I stayed and struggled! You came to New Orleans and looked out for yourself! I stayed at Belle Reve and tried to hold it together!
I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!
You’re a fine one to sit there accusing me of it!
All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard!...But had to be burned like rubbish!
Where were you. In bed with your- Polak!
[Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes… Everything that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer. He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them.]
[drawing involuntarily back from his stare]
[He holds the bottle to the light to observe its depletion.]
No I-rarely touch it.
[He starts to remove his shirt]
[The music of the polka rises up, faint in the distance] …The boy- the boy died [She sinks back down.] I’m afraid I’m- going to be sick!
[vaguely] Oh, it had to be-sacrificed or something.
When you’re swindled under the Napoleonic code I’m swindled too.
I’m willing to bet you there’s thousands of dollars invested in this stuff here!
[He kicks the trunk partly closed]
Since when do you give me orders?
Excuse me while I slip on my pretty new dress!!
[He crosses through drapes with a smouldering look.]
Oh, in my youth I excited some admiration…Would you think it possible that I was once considered to be- attractive?
[Then playfully sprays him with it. He seizes the atomiser and slams it down on the dresser.]
Don’t play so dumb. You know what!
What’s in the back of that little boy’s mind of yours?
The touch of your hands insults them!...[Blanche snatches them from him, and they cascade to the floor.]
Now that you’ve touched them I’ll burn them!
I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can’t! I’m not young and vulnerable anymore. But my young husband was and I—never mind about that!
Our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications—to put it plainly!
I think it’s wonderfully fitting that Belle Reve should finally be this bunch of old papers in your big, capable hands!
Yes, I was flirting with your husband, Stella!
The blind are- leading the blind!
The poker players…wear colored shirts…and they are men at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors.
[He lurches up and tosses some watermelon rinds to the floor.]
How do I look?...Lovely, Blanche.
Why no. You are as fresh as a daisy…One that’s been picked a few days.
Please don’t get up…Nobody’s going to get up, so don’t be worried.
[Stanley gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh.]
[sharply] That’s not fun, Stanley…It makes me so mad when he does that in front of people.
[with awkward courtesy] How do you do, Miss DuBois.
No. Stanley’s the only one of his crowd that’s likely to get anywhere…It isn’t genius…It’s a drive that he has.
You hens cut out that conversation in there! //This is my house and I’ll talk as much as I want to!
[Stanley jumps up and, crossing to the radio, turns it off.]
[He jumps up and jerks roughly at curtains to close them]
And when he goes home he’ll deposit them one by one in a piggy bank his mother give him for Christmas.
The little there is belongs to people who have experienced some sorrow.
I’m not accustomed to having more than one drink. Two is the limit.
We are French by extraction. Our first American ancestors were French Huguenots.
I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
No, no. I’m an old maid schoolteacher!
And in the spring, it’s touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before!
[He crosses to the small white radio and snatches it off the table. With a shouted oath, he tosses the instrument out the window.]
Drunk — drunk — animal thing, you!
[Stanley charges after Stella.]
[There is the sound of a blow. Stella cries out.]
[in a high, unnatural voice, out of sight]. I want to go away, I want to go away!
Poker shouldn’t be played in a house with women.
Let the rut go of me, you sons of bitches! [Sounds of blows are heard. The water goes on full tilt.]
[He goes to the phone and dials, still shuddering with sobs.]
[He hurls phone to floor.]
[with heaven-splitting violence]: STELL-LAHHHHH!
Her eyes are glistening with tears and her hair loose about her throat and shoulders. They stare at each other. Then they come together with low, animal moans.
So much confusion in the world…Thank you for being so kind! I need kindness now.
[Her eyes and lips have that almost narcotized tranquility that is in the faces of Eastern idols.]
It wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to take it when men are drinking and playing poker, anything can happen. It’s always a powder-keg.
No, it isn’t all right for anybody to make such a terrible row, but — people do sometimes. Stanley’s always smashed things.
He smashed all the light-bulbs with the heel of my slipper!
I was—sort of—thrilled by it.
[slowly and emphatically] I’m not in anything I want to get out of.
It’s his pleasure, like mine is movies and bridge. People have got to tolerate each other’s habits, I guess.
I won’t have you cleaning up for him!
We’ve got to get hold of some money, that’s the way out!
Y’know how indifferent I am to money. I think of money in terms of what it does for you.
This morning he gave me ten dollars to smooth things over.
Money just goes—it goes places. [She rubs her forehead].
What such a man has to offer is animal force… But the only way to live with such a man is to—go to bed with him!
I take it for granted that you still have sufficient memory of Belle Reve to find this place and these poker players impossible to live with.
But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark— that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant.
What you are talking about is brutal desire—just-Desire!—the name of that rattle-trap street-car that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.
Then don’t you think your superior attitude is a bit out of place?
Well—if you’ll forgive me—he’s common!
He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one!... Maybe he’ll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you!... Maybe we are a long way from being made in God’s image, but Stella—my sister—there has been some progress since then!
Don’t—don’t hang back with the brutes!
[shrieking] You hit me! I’m gonna call the police!
[brightly] Did he kill her?
That’s much more practical!
[He jerks open the bureau drawer, slams it shut and throws shoes in a corner.]
You must have had lots of banging around in the army and now that you’re out, you make up for it by treating inanimate objects with such a fury!
The Hotel Flamingo is not the sort of establishment I would dare to be seen in!
I wasn’t so good the last two years or so, after Belle Reve had started to slip through my fingers.
I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. When people are soft-soft people have got to court the favour of hard ones, Stella.
People don’t see you- men don’t- don’t even admit your existence. And you’ve got to have your existence admitted by someone, if you’re going to have someone’s protection.
I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I—I’m fading now!
Why did you scream like that?...I don’t know why I screamed! [continuing nervously]
I want his respect. And men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand men lose interest quickly.
Because of hard knocks my vanity’s been given.
[She laughs out sharply] I want to deceive him enough to make him—want me . ..
Yes—I want Mitch . . . very badly! Just think! If it happens! I can leave here and not be anyone’s problem.
Will you—have a drink?
You make my mouth water. [She touches his cheek lightly, and smiles.]
Young man! Young, young, young man! Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights?
Well, you do, honey lamb! Come here. I want to kiss you, just once, softly and sweetly on your mouth! [Without waiting for him to accept, she crosses quickly to him and presses her lips to his.]
It would be nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good—and keep my hands off children.
Look who’s coming! My Rosenkavalier! Bow to me first! Now present them! [He does so. She curtsies low.] Ahhh! Merciiii!
The one that says the lady must entertain the gentleman—or no dice!
I’ve outstayed my welcome.
Why do you always ask me if you may?
It was the other little—familiarity—that I—felt obliged to—discourage… I was somewhat flattered that you— desired me! But, honey, you know as well as I do that a single girl, a girl alone in the world, has got to keep a firm hold on her emotions or she’ll be lost!
Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?... I’ve found some liquor!
Guess how much I weigh, Blanche?
You are light as a feather.
You’re a natural gentleman, one of the very few that are left in the world.
I guess it is just that I have—old-fashioned ideals! [She rolls her eyes, knowing he cannot see her face]
He is insufferably rude. Goes out of his way to offend me…Why, in every conceivable way.
Perhaps in some perverse kind of way he-No!
He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl.
It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow.
There was something different about the boy, a nervousness, a softness and tenderness which wasn’t like a man’s, although he wasn’t the least bit effeminate looking.
He came to me for help. I didn’t know that.
All I knew was I’d failed him in some mysterious way and wasn’t able to give the help he needed but couldn’t speak of!
[Polka music sounds, in a minor key faint with distance.]
[The Polka stops abruptly. Blanche rises stiffly. Then, the Polka resumes in a major key.]
And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this—kitchen—candle.
[drawing her slowly into his arms] You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be—you and me, Blanche?
[She makes a sobbing effort to speak but the words won’t come. He kisses her forehead and her eyes and finally her lips. The Polka tune fades out. Her breath is drawn and released in long, grateful sobs.]
Blanche and I grew up under very different circumstances than you did.
In fact they was so impressed by Dame Blanche that they requested her to turn in her room-key—for permanently!
But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me!
And for the last year or two she has been washed up like poison.
As time went by she became a town character// because she’s practically told by the mayor to get out of town! //Yep, it was practically a town ordinance passed against her!
I think Blanche didn’t just love him but worshipped the ground he walked on! Adored him and thought him almost too fine to be human!
This beautiful and talented young man was a degenerate.
I’d have that on my conscience the rest of my life if I knew all that stuff and let my best friend get caught!
Maybe he was, but he’s not going to jump in a tank with a school of sharks—now!
In the first place, Blanche wouldn’t go on a bus.//She’ll go on a bus and like it.
Stanley pays no attention to the story but reaches way over the table to spear his fork into the remaining chop which he eats with his fingers.
Mr. Kowalski is too busy making a pig of himself to think of anything else!
Your face and your fingers are disgustingly greasy. Go and wash up and then help me clear the table.
[He hurls a plate to the floor.]
[He seizes her arm] Don’t ever talk that way to me! “Pig—Polack—disgusting—vulgar—greasy!”
Remember what Huey Long said — “Every Man is a King!” And I am the king around here, so don’t forget it! [He hurls a cup and saucer to the floor]
Them nights we had together? God, honey, it’s gonna be sweet when we can make noise in the night the way that we used to.
Or wind blows them out and after that happens, electric light bulbs go on and you see too plainly…
You healthy Polack, without a nerve in your body, of course you don’t know what anxiety feels like!
I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack.
[She clutches her throat and then runs into the bathroom. Coughing, gagging sounds are heard.]
She is. She was. You didn’t know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.
[She catches hold of his shirt] … Let go of my shirt. You’ve torn it.
I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it, having them colored lights going!
[She rushes about frantically, hiding the bottle in a closet, crouching at the mirror and dabbing her face with cologne and powder.]
[A distant revolver shot is heard. Blanche seems relieved.] There now, the shot! It always stops after that. [The polka music dies out again.]
You ought to lay off his liquor. He says you been lapping it up all summer like a wild-cat!
I won’t descend to the level of such cheap accusations to answer them, even!
I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me.
[He tears the paper lantern off the light bulb. She utters a frightened gasp.]
So I can take a look at you good and plain!//No, just realistic.
I don’t want realism. I want magic!... I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth.
[He turns the light on and stares at her. She cries out and covers her face.]
Yes, a big spider! That’s where I brought my victims. [She pours herself another drink] Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan—intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with. . . . I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection.
[She throws back her head with convulsive, sobbing laughter.]
There was nowhere else I could go. I was played out. You know what played out is? My youth was suddenly gone up the water-spout. You said you needed somebody. Well, I needed somebody, too.
Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart . . .
Legacies! Huh. . . . And other things such as bloodstained pillow-slips—'Her linen needs changing’—'Yes Mother. But couldn’t we get a colored girl to do it?’ No, we couldn’t of course.
We didn’t dare even admit we had ever heard of it!
The opposite is desire.
[fumbling to embrace her] What I been missing all summer.
You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.
[Blanche has been drinking fairly steadily since Mitch left.]
[Now she is placing the rhinestone tiara on her head before the mirror of the dressing-table and murmuring excitedly as if to a group of spectral admirers.]
Only you’ve got to be careful to dive where the deep pool is—if you hit a rock you don’t come up till tomorrow.
[Tremblingly she lifts the hand mirror for a closer inspection. She catches her breath and slams the mirror face down with such violence that the glass cracks.]
The silk pyjamas I wore on my wedding night!
This man is a gentleman and he respects me. [Improvising feverishly] What he wants is my companionship. Having great wealth sometimes makes people lonely!
How strange that I should be called a destitute woman! When I have all of these treasures locked in my heart. [A choked sob comes from her] I think of myself as a very, very rich woman! But I have been foolish—casting my pearls before swine!
Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the one unforgivable thing in my opinion and it is the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty.
Our ways of life are too different. Our attitudes and our backgrounds are incompatible. We have to be realistic about such things.
[Lurid reflections appear on the walls around Blanche. The shadows are of a grotesque and menacing form.]
[The night is filled with inhuman voices like cries in a jungle.]
[She moans. The bottle-top falls. She sinks to her knees. He picks up her inert figure and carries her to the bed.]
I always did say that men are callous things with no feelings.
I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley.
Don’t ever believe it. Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep on going.
[The gravity of their profession is exaggerated—the unmistakable aura of the state institution with its cynical detachment.]
[As she does, Stanley suddenly pushes back, his chair and rises as if to block, her way.]
[The “Varsouviana” is filtered into a weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle.]
[Divested of all the softer properties of womanhood, the Matron is a peculiarly sinister figure in her severe dress. Her voice is bold and toneless as a fire-bell.]
[rising and falling] Now, Blanche—now, Blanche—now, Blanche!
[He crosses to dressing table and seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it toward her. She cries out as if the lantern was herself.]
What have I done to my sister? Oh, God, what have I done to my sister?
You done the right thing, the only thing you could do…there wasn’t no other place for her to go.
[He takes off his hat and now he becomes personalized. The unhuman quality goes. His voice is gentle and reassuring as he crosses to Blanche and crouches in front of her.]
[Blanche extends her hands toward the Doctor. He draws her up gently and supports her with his arm and leads her through the portieres.]
[holding tight to his arm] Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
[She allows him to lead her as if she were blind.]
[She sobs with inhuman abandon. There is something luxurious in her complete surrender to crying now that her sister is gone.]
[He kneels beside her and his fingers find the opening of her blouse] Now, now, love. Now, love.
This game is seven-card stud.