The Skin of Our Teeth Page 8

  SABINA’S VOICE:

  Mrs. An-tro-bus!

  MRS. ANTROBUS AND GLADYS:

  What’s that?!!

  SABINA’S VOICE:

  Glaaaadys! Mrs. An-tro-bus!

  Enter SABINA.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Gladys, that’s Sabina’s voice as sure as I live.—Sabina! Sabina!—Are you alive?!!

  SABINA:

  Of course, I’m alive. How’ve you girls been?—Don’t try and kiss me. I never want to kiss another human being as long as I live. Sh-sh, there’s nothing to get emotional about. Pull yourself together, the war’s over. Take a deep breath,—the war’s over.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  The war’s over!! I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you. I can’t believe you.

  GLADYS:

  Mama!

  SABINA:

  Who’s that?

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  That’s Gladys and her baby. I don’t believe you. Gladys, Sabina says the war’s over. Oh, Sabina.

  SABINA:

  Leaning over the BABY.

  Goodness! Are there any babies left in the world! Can it see? And can it cry and everything?

  GLADYS:

  Yes, he can. He notices everything very well.

  SABINA:

  Where on earth did you get it? Oh, I won’t ask.—Lord, I’ve lived all these seven years around camp and I’ve forgotten how to behave.—Now we’ve got to think about the men coming home.—Mrs. Antrobus, go and wash your face, I’m ashamed of you. Put your best clothes on. Mr. Antrobus’ll be here this afternoon. I just saw him downtown.

  MRS. ANTROBUS AND GLADYS:

  He’s alive!! He’ll be here!! Sabina, you’re not joking?

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  And Henry?

  SABINA:

  Drily.

  Yes, Henry’s alive, too, that’s what they say. Now don’t stop to talk. Get yourselves fixed up. Gladys, you look terrible. Have you any decent clothes?

  SABINA has pushed them toward the trapdoor.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Half down.

  Yes, I’ve something to wear just for this very day. But, Sabina,—who won the war?

  SABINA:

  Don’t stop now,—just wash your face.

  A whistle sounds in the distance.

  Oh, my God, what’s that silly little noise?

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Why, it sounds like . . . it sounds like what used to be the noon whistle at the shoe-polish factory.

  Exit.

  SABINA:

  That’s what it is. Seems to me like peacetime’s coming along pretty fast—shoe polish!

  GLADYS:

  Half down.

  Sabina, how soon after peacetime begins does the milkman start coming to the door?

  SABINA:

  As soon as he catches a cow. Give him time to catch a cow, dear.

  Exit GLADYS. SABINA walks about a moment, thinking.

  Shoe polish! My, I’d forgotten what peacetime was like.

  She shakes her head, then sits down by the trapdoor and starts talking down the hole.

  Mrs. Antrobus, guess what I saw Mr. Antrobus doing this morning at dawn. He was tacking up a piece of paper on the door of the Town Hall. You’ll die when you hear: it was a recipe for grass soup, for a grass soup that doesn’t give you the diarrhea. Mr. Antrobus is still thinking up new things.—He told me to give you his love. He’s got all sorts of ideas for peacetime, he says. No more laziness and idiocy, he says. And oh, yes! Where are his books? What? Well, pass them up. The first thing he wants to see are his books. He says if you’ve burnt those books, or if the rats have eaten them, he says it isn’t worthwhile starting over again. Everybody’s going to be beautiful, he says, and diligent, and very intelligent.

  A hand reaches up with two volumes.

  What language is that? Pu-u-gh,—mold! And he’s got such plans for you, Mrs. Antrobus. You’re going to study history and algebra—and so are Gladys and I—and philosophy. You should hear him talk:

  Taking two more volumes.

  Well, these are in English, anyway.—To hear him talk, seems like he expects you to be a combination, Mrs. Antrobus, of a saint and a college professor, and a dancehall hostess, if you know what I mean.

  Two more volumes.

  Ugh. German!

  She is lying on the floor; one elbow bent, her cheek on her hand, meditatively.

  Yes, peace will be here before we know it. In a week or two we’ll be asking the Perkinses in for a quiet evening of bridge. We’ll turn on the radio and hear how to be big successes with a new toothpaste. We’ll trot down to the movies and see how girls with wax faces live—all that will begin again. Oh, Mrs. Antrobus, God forgive me but I enjoyed the war. Everybody’s at their best in wartime. I’m sorry it’s over. And, oh, I forgot! Mr. Antrobus sent you another message—can you hear me?—

  Enter HENRY, blackened and sullen. He is wearing torn overalls, but has one gaudy admiral’s epaulette hanging by a thread from his right shoulder, and there are vestiges of gold and scarlet braid running down his left trouser leg. He stands listening.

  Listen! Henry’s never to put foot in this house again, he says. He’ll kill Henry on sight, if he sees him.

  You don’t know about Henry??? Well, where have you been? What? Well, Henry rose right to the top. Top of what? Listen, I’m telling you. Henry rose from corporal to captain, to major, to general.—I don’t know how to say it, but the enemy is Henry; Henry is the enemy. Everybody knows that.

  HENRY:

  He’ll kill me, will he?

  SABINA:

  Who are you? I’m not afraid of you. The war’s over.

  HENRY:

  I’ll kill him so fast. I’ve spent seven years trying to find him; the others I killed were just substitutes.

  SABINA:

  Goodness! It’s Henry!—

  He makes an angry gesture.

  Oh, I’m not afraid of you. The war’s over, Henry Antrobus, and you’re not any more important than any other unemployed. You go away and hide yourself, until we calm your father down.

  HENRY:

  The first thing to do is to burn up those old books; it’s the ideas he gets out of those old books that . . . that makes the whole world so you can’t live in it.

  He reels forward and starts kicking the books about, but suddenly falls down in a sitting position.

  SABINA:

  You leave those books alone!! Mr. Antrobus is looking forward to them a-special.—Gracious sakes, Henry, you’re so tired you can’t stand up. Your mother and sister’ll be here in a minute and we’ll think what to do about you.

  HENRY:

  What did they ever care about me?

  SABINA:

  There’s that old whine again. All you people think you’re not loved enough, nobody loves you. Well, you start being lovable and we’ll love you.

  HENRY:

  Outraged.

  I don’t want anybody to love me.

  SABINA:

  Then stop talking about it all the time.

  HENRY:

  I never talk about it. The last thing I want is anybody to pay any attention to me.

  SABINA:

  I can hear it behind every word you say.

  HENRY:

  I want everybody to hate me.

  SABINA:

  Yes, you’ve decided that’s second best, but it’s still the same thing.—Mrs. Antrobus! Henry’s here. He’s so tired he can’t stand up.

  MRS. ANTROBUS and GLADYS, with her BABY, emerge. They are dressed as in Act I. MRS. ANTROBUS carries some objects in her apron, and GLADYS has a blanket over her shoulder.

  MRS. ANTROBUS AND GLADYS:

  Henry! Henry! Henry!

  HENRY:

  Glaring at them.

  Have you anything to eat?

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Yes, I have, Henry. I’ve been saving it for this very day,—two good baked potatoes. No! Henry! one of them’s for your
father. Henry!! Give me that other potato back this minute.

  SABINA sidles up behind him and snatches the other potato away.

  SABINA:

  He’s so dog-tired he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Now you just rest there, Henry, until I can get your room ready. Eat that potato good and slow, so you can get all the nourishment out of it.

  HENRY:

  You all might as well know right now that I haven’t come back here to live.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Sh. . . . I’ll put this coat over you. Your room’s hardly damaged at all. Your football trophies are a little tarnished, but Sabina and I will polish them up tomorrow.

  HENRY:

  Did you hear me? I don’t live here. I don’t belong to anybody.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Why, how can you say a thing like that! You certainly do belong right here. Where else would you want to go? Your forehead’s feverish, Henry, seems to me. You’d better give me that gun, Henry. You won’t need that any more.

  GLADYS:

  Whispering.

  Look, he’s fallen asleep already, with his potato half-chewed.

  SABINA:

  Puh! The terror of the world.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Sabina, you mind your own business, and start putting the room to rights.

  HENRY has turned his face to the back of the sofa. MRS. ANTROBUS gingerly puts the revolver in her apron pocket, then helps SABINA. SABINA has found a rope hanging from the ceiling. Grunting, she hangs all her weight on it, and as she pulls the walls begin to move into their right places. MRS. ANTROBUS brings the overturned tables, chairs and hassock into the positions of Act I.

  SABINA:

  That’s all we do—always beginning again! Over and over again. Always beginning again.

  She pulls on the rope and a part of the wall moves into place. She stops. Meditatively:

  How do we know that it’ll be any better than before? Why do we go on pretending? Someday the whole earth’s going to have to turn cold anyway, and until that time all these other things’ll be happening again: it will be more wars and more walls of ice and floods and earthquakes.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Sabina!! Stop arguing and go on with your work.

  SABINA:

  All right. I’ll go on just out of habit, but I won’t believe in it.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Aroused.

  Now, Sabina. I’ve let you talk long enough. I don’t want to hear any more of it. Do I have to explain to you what everybody knows,—everybody who keeps a home going? Do I have to say to you what nobody should ever have to say, because they can read it in each other’s eyes?

  Now listen to me:

  MRS. ANTROBUS takes hold of the rope.

  I could live for seventy years in a cellar and make soup out of grass and bark, without ever doubting that this world has a work to do and will do it.

  Do you hear me?

  SABINA:

  Frightened.

  Yes, Mrs. Antrobus.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Sabina, do you see this house,—216 Cedar Street,—do you see it?

  SABINA:

  Yes, Mrs. Antrobus.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Well, just to have known this house is to have seen the idea of what we can do someday if we keep our wits about us. Too many people have suffered and died for my children for us to start reneging now. So we’ll start putting this house to rights: Now, Sabina, go and see what you can do in the kitchen.

  SABINA:

  Kitchen! Why is it that however far I go away, I always find myself back in the kitchen?

  Exit.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Still thinking over her last speech, relaxes and says with a reminiscent smile:

  Goodness gracious, wouldn’t you know that my father was a parson? It was just like I heard his own voice speaking and he’s been dead five thousand years. There! I’ve gone and almost waked Henry up.

  HENRY:

  Talking in his sleep, indistinctly.

  Fellows . . . what have they done for us? . . . Blocked our way at every step. Kept everything in their own hands. And you’ve stood it. When are you going to wake up?

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Sh, Henry. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.—Well, that looks better. Now let’s go and help Sabina.

  GLADYS:

  Mama, I’m going out into the backyard and hold the baby right up in the air. And show him that we don’t have to be afraid any more.

  Exit GLADYS to the kitchen.

  MRS. ANTROBUS glances at HENRY, exits into kitchen. HENRY thrashes about in his sleep. Enter ANTROBUS, his arms full of bundles, chewing the end of a carrot. He has a slight limp. Over the suit of Act I he is wearing an overcoat too long for him, its skirts trailing on the ground. He lets his bundles fall and stands looking about. Presently his attention is fixed on HENRY, whose words grow clearer.

  HENRY:

  All right! What have you got to lose? What have they done for us? That’s right—nothing. Tear everything down. I don’t care what you smash. We’ll begin again and we’ll show ’em.

  ANTROBUS takes out his revolver and holds it pointing downwards. With his back toward the audience he moves toward the footlights.

  HENRY’S voice grows louder and he wakes with a start. They stare at one another. Then HENRY sits up quickly. Throughout the following scene HENRY is played, not as a misunderstood or misguided young man, but as a representation of strong unreconciled evil.

  All right! Do something.

  Pause.

  Don’t think I’m afraid of you, either. All right, do what you were going to do. Do it.

  Furiously.

  Shoot me, I tell you. You don’t have to think I’m any relation of yours. I haven’t got any father or any mother, or brothers or sisters. And I don’t want any. And what’s more I haven’t got anybody over me; and I never will have. I’m alone, and that’s all I want to be: alone. So you can shoot me.

  ANTROBUS:

  You’re the last person I wanted to see. The sight of you dries up all my plans and hopes. I wish I were back at war still, because it’s easier to fight you than to live with you. War’s a pleasure—do you hear me?—War’s a pleasure compared to what faces us now: trying to build up a peacetime with you in the middle of it.

  ANTROBUS walks up to the window.

  HENRY:

  I’m not going to be a part of any peacetime of yours. I’m going a long way from here and make my own world that’s fit for a man to live in. Where a man can be free, and have a chance, and do what he wants to do in his own way.

  ANTROBUS:

  His attention arrested; thoughtfully. He throws the gun out of the window and turns with hope.

  . . . Henry, let’s try again.

  HENRY:

  Try what? Living here?—Speaking polite downtown to all the old men like you? Standing like a sheep at the street corner until the red light turns to green? Being a good boy and a good sheep, like all the stinking ideas you get out of your books? Oh, no. I’ll make a world, and I’ll show you.

  ANTROBUS:

  Hard.

  How can you make a world for people to live in, unless you’ve first put order in yourself? Mark my words: I shall continue fighting you until my last breath as long as you mix up your idea of liberty with your idea of hogging everything for yourself. I shall have no pity on you. I shall pursue you to the far corners of the earth. You and I want the same thing; but until you think of it as something that everyone has a right to, you are my deadly enemy and I will destroy you.—I hear your mother’s voice in the kitchen. Have you seen her?

  HENRY:

  I have no mother. Get it into your head. I don’t belong here. I have nothing to do here. I have no home.

  ANTROBUS:

  Then why did you come here? With the whole world to choose from, why did you come to this one place: 216 Cedar Street, Excelsior, N
ew Jersey. . . . Well?

  HENRY:

  What if I did? What if I wanted to look at it once more, to see if—

  ANTROBUS:

  Oh, you’re related, all right—When your mother comes in you must behave yourself. Do you hear me?

  HENRY:

  Wildly.

  What is this?—must behave yourself. Don’t you say must to me.

  ANTROBUS:

  Quiet!

  Enter MRS. ANTROBUS and SABINA.

  HENRY:

  Nobody can say must to me. All my life everybody’s been crossing me,—everybody, everything, all of you. I’m going to be free, even if I have to kill half the world for it. Right now, too. Let me get my hands on his throat. I’ll show him.

  He advances toward ANTROBUS. Suddenly, SABINA jumps between them and calls out in her own person:

  SABINA:

  Stop! Stop! Don’t play this scene. You know what happened last night. Stop the play.

  The men fall back, panting. HENRY covers his face with his hands.

  Last night you almost strangled him. You became a regular savage. Stop it!

  HENRY:

  It’s true. I’m sorry. I don’t know what comes over me. I have nothing against him personally. I respect him very much . . . I . . . I admire him. But something comes over me. It’s like I become fifteen years old again. I . . . I . . . listen: my own father used to whip me and lock me up every Saturday night. I never had enough to eat. He never let me have enough money to buy decent clothes. I was ashamed to go downtown. I never could go to the dances. My father and my uncle put rules in the way of everything I wanted to do. They tried to prevent my living at all.—I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Quickly.

  No, go on. Finish what you were saying. Say it all.

  HENRY:

  In this scene it’s as though I were back in High School again. It’s like I had some big emptiness inside me,—the emptiness of being hated and blocked at every turn. And the emptiness fills up with the one thought that you have to strike and fight and kill. Listen, it’s as though you have to kill somebody else so as not to end up killing yourself.

  SABINA:

  That’s not true. I knew your father and your uncle and your mother. You imagined all that. Why, they did everything they could for you. How can you say things like that? They didn’t lock you up.

  HENRY:

  They did. They did. They wished I hadn’t been born.

  SABINA: