WALLY: Well, why should you feel that way?
ANDRE: Well, you see, I've had a very rough time in the last few months, Wally. Three different people in my family were in the hospital at the same time. Then my mother died, then Marina had something wrong with her back and we were terribly worried about her, you know, so.... So, I mean, I'm feeling very raw right now. I mean...I mean, I can't sleep, my nerves are shot, I mean, I'm affected by everything. You know, last week, I had this really nice director, from Norway, over for dinner? And he's someone I've known for years and years, and he's somebody I think I'm quite fond of. And, I was sitting there just thinking that he was a pompous, defensive, conservative stuffed-shirt who was only interested in the theater, you know, he was talking and talking, you know, his mother had been a famous Norwegian comedian. I realized he had said "I remember my mother" at least four hundred times during the evening. And he was telling story after story about his mother, you know, I'd heard these stories twenty times in the past. He was drinking this whole bottle of bourbon very quietly, and his laugh was so horrible! You know, I could hear his laugh, the pain in that laugh, the hollowness, you know, what being that woman's son had done to him, you know. So at a certain point I just had to ask him to leave, nicely, you know, I told him I had to get up early the next morning 'cause it was so horrible. It was just as if he had died in my living room, and then, you know, then I went into the bathroom and cried 'cause I felt I'd lost a friend.
And then after he had gone I turned the television on, and there was this guy who had just won the something-something, you know, some sports event, some kind of great big check and some kind of huge silver bottle. And you know, he couldn't stuff the check in the bottle, and he put the bottle in front of his nose and pretended it was his face. You know, he wasn't really listening to the guy who was interviewing him, but he was smiling malevolently at his friends. And I looked at that guy and I thought: "What a horrible, empty, manipulative rat!" Then I thought: "That guy is me!" Then last night, actually, it was our twentieth wedding anniversary. And I took Chiquita to see the show about Billie Holiday, and I looked at these show-business people, who know nothing about Billie Holiday, nothing, so you're really kind of in a way intellectual creeps? And I suddenly had this feeling, I mean, you know, I was just sitting there crying through most of the show. And I suddenly had this feeling, I was just as creepy as they were! And that my whole life had been a sham, and I didn't have the guts to be Billie Holiday either. I mean, I really feel that I'm just washed up! Wiped out! I feel I've just squandered my life!
WALLY: [Pause.] André! Now, how can you say something like that?
ANDRE: [Long pause.] Well, you know, I may be in a very emotional state right now, Wally, but since I've come back home, I've just been finding the world we're living in more and more upsetting. I mean. Last week I went down to the public theater one afternoon. You know, when I walked in I said "hello" to everybody, 'cause I know them all and they all know me, and they're always very friendly. You know that seven or eight people told me how wonderful I looked, and then one person, one, a woman who runs the casting office, said: "Gee, you look horrible! Is something wrong?" Now she, we started talking, of course I started telling her things, and she suddenly burst into tears because an aunt of hers, who's eighty, whom she's very fond of, went into the hospital for a cataract, which was solved, but the nurse was so sloppy she didn't put the bed rails up, so the aunt fell out of bed and is now a complete cripple! So, you know, we were talking about hospitals. Now, you know, this woman, because of who she is, you know, 'cause this had happened to her very, very recently, she could see me with complete clarity. [Wally says "Un-hunh."] She didn't know anything about what I've been going through. But the other people, what they saw was this tan or this shirt, or the fact that the shirt goes well with the tan, so they say: "Gee, you look wonderful!" Now, they're living in an insane dream world! They're not looking. That seems very strange to me.
WALLY: Right, because they just didn't see anything somehow, except the few little things that they wanted to see.
ANDRE: Yeah. You know, it's like what happened just before my mother died. You know, we'd gone to the hospital to see my mother, and I went in to see her. And I saw this woman who looked as bad as any survivor of Auschwitz or Dachau. And I was out in the hall, sort of comforting my father, when a doctor who is a specialist in a problem that she had with her arm, went into her room and came out just beaming. And he said: "Boy! Don't we have a lot of reason to feel great! Isn't it wonderful how she's coming along!" Now, all he saw was the arm, that's all he saw. Now, here's another person who's existing in a dream. Who on top of that is a kind of butcher, who's committing a kind of familial murder, because when he comes out of that room he psychically kills us by taking us into a dream world, where we become confused and frightened. Because the moment before we saw somebody who already looked dead and now here comes a specialist who tells us they're in wonderful shape! I mean, you know, they were literally driving my father crazy. I mean, you know, here's an eighty-two-year-old man who's very emotional, and, you know, if you go in one moment, and you see the person's dying, and you don't want them to die, and then a doctor comes out five minutes later and tells you they're in wonderful shape! I mean, you know, you can go crazy!
WALLY: Yeah, I know what you mean.
ANDRE: I mean, the doctor didn't see my mother. People at the public theater didn't see me. I mean, we're just walking around in some kind of fog. I think we're all in a trance! We're walking around like zombies! I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things, we're just going around all day like unconscious machines, I mean, while there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness just building up and building up inside us!
WALLY: That's right. It just builds up, and then it just leaps out inappropriately. I mean, I remember when I was acting in this play based on The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, and I was playing the part of the cat. But they had trouble making up my cat suit. So I didn't get it delivered to me until the night of the first performance. Particularly the head, I mean, I had never even had a chance to try it on. And about four of my fellow actors actually came up to me, and they said these things which I just couldn't help thinking were attempts to destroy me. You know, one of them said: "Oh! Well, now! That head will totally change your hearing in the performance! You may hear everything completely differently! And it may be very upsetting. Now, I was once in a performance where I was wearing earmuffs, and I couldn't hear anything anybody said!" And then another one said: "Oh, you know, whenever I wear even a hat on stage, I tend to faint." I mean, those remarks were just full of hostility. Because, I mean, you know, if I had listened to those people I would have gone out there on stage, and I wouldn't have been able to hear anything and I would have fainted! But the hostility was completely inappropriate, because in fact those people liked me, I mean, that hostility was just some feeling that was, you know, left over from some previous experience. Because somehow in our social existence today we're only allowed to express our feelings weirdly and indirectly. If you express them directly everybody goes crazy!
ANDRE: Well, did you express your feelings, about what those people said to you?
WALLY: No! I mean, I didn't even know what I felt till I thought about it later. And I mean, at the most, you know, in a situation like that, even if I had known what I felt, I might say something, if I'm really annoyed, like: "Oh, yeah. Well, that's just fascinating! And I probably will faint tonight, just as you did!"