Complete Works, Volume IV by Harold Pinter Read Free Book Online Page A

please don’t be alarmed. I shan’t stay long. I never stay long, with others. They do not wish it. And that, for me, is a happy state of affairs. My only security, you see, my true comfort and solace, rests in the confirmation that I elicit from people of all kinds a common and constant level of indifference. It assures me that I am as I think myself to be, that I am fixed, concrete. To show interest in me or, good gracious, anything tending towards a positive liking of me, would cause in me a condition of the acutest alarm. Fortunately, the danger is remote.
    Pause.
    I speak to you with this startling candour because you are clearly a reticent man, which appeals, and because you are a stranger to me, and because you are clearly kindness itself.
    Pause.
    Do you often hang about Hampstead Heath?
    HIRST No.
    SPOONER But on your excursions . . . however rare . . . on your rare excursions . . . you hardly expect to run into the likes of me? I take it?
    HIRST Hardly.
    SPOONER I often hang about Hampstead Heath myself, expecting nothing. I’m too old for any kind of expectation. Don’t you agree?
    HIRST Yes.
    SPOONER A pitfall and snare, if ever there was one. But of course I observe a good deal, on my peeps through twigs. A wit once entitled me a betwixt-twig peeper. A most clumsy construction, I thought.
    HIRST Infelicitous.
    SPOONER My Christ you’re right.
    Pause.
    HIRST What a wit.
    SPOONER You’re most acutely right. All we have left is the English language. Can it be salvaged? That is my question.
    HIRST You mean in what rests its salvation?
    SPOONER More or less.
    HIRST Its salvation must rest in you.
    SPOONER It’s uncommonly kind of you to say so. In you too, perhaps, although I haven’t sufficient evidence to go on, as yet.
    Pause.
    HIRST You mean because I’ve said little?
    SPOONER You’re a quiet one. It’s a great relief. Can you imagine two of us gabbling away like me? It would be intolerable.
    Pause.
    By the way, with reference to peeping, I do feel it incumbent upon me to make one thing clear. I don’t peep on sex. That’s gone forever. You follow me? When my twigs happen to shall I say rest their peep on sexual conjugations, however periphrastic, I see only whites of eyes, so close, they glut me, no distance possible, and when you can’t keep the proper distance between yourself and others, when you can no longer maintain an objective relation to matter, the game’s not worth the candle, so forget it and remember that what is obligatory to keep in your vision is space, space in moonlight particularly, and lots of it.
    HIRST You speak with the weight of experience behind you.
    SPOONER And beneath me. Experience is a paltry thing. Everyone has it and will tell his tale of it. I leave experience to psychological interpreters, the wetdream world. I myself can do any graph of experience you wish, to suit your taste or mine. Child’s play. The present will not be distorted. I am a poet. I am interested in where I am eternally present and active.
    Hirst stands, goes to cabinet, pours vodka.
    I have gone too far, you think?
    HIRST I’m expecting you to go very much further.
    SPOONER Really? That doesn’t mean I interest you, I hope?
    HIRST Not in the least.
    SPOONER Thank goodness for that. For a moment my heart sank.
    Hirst draws the curtains aside, looks out briefly, lets curtain fall, remains standing.
    But nevertheless you’re right. Your instinct is sound. I could go further, in more ways than one. I could advance, reserve my defences, throw on a substitute, call up the cavalry, or throw everything forward out of the knowledge that when joy overfloweth there can be no holding of joy. The point I’m trying to make, in case you’ve missed it, is that I am a free man.
    Hirst pours himself another vodka and drinks it. He puts the glass down, moves carefully to his chair, sits.
    HIRST It’s a long time since we had a free man in this