Death of a Salesman (13 page)

WILLY: What?

CHARLEY: Don’t you listen to the radio? Ebbets Field just blew up.

WILLY: You go to hell! [CHARLEY
laughs. Pushing them out
] Come on, come on! We’re late.

CHARLEY [
as they go
]: Knock a homer, Biff, knock a homer!

WILLY [
the last to leave, turning to
CHARLEY]: I don’t think that was funny, Charley. This is the greatest day of his life.

CHARLEY: Willy, when are you going to grow up?

WILLY: Yeah, heh? When this game is over, Charley, you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face. They’ll be calling him another Red Grange. Twenty-five thousand a year.

CHARLEY [
kidding
]: Is that so?

WILLY: Yeah, that’s so.

CHARLEY: Well, then, I’m sorry, Willy. But tell me something.

WILLY: What?

CHARLEY: Who is Red Grange?

WILLY: Put up your hands. Goddam you, put up your hands!

WILLY: Who the hell do you think you are, better than everybody else? You don’t know everything, you big, ignorant, stupid . . . Put up your hands!

WILLY [
offstage
]: What are you walking away for? Don’t walk away! If you’re going to say something say it to my face! I know you laugh at me behind my back. You’ll laugh out of the other side of your goddam face after this game. Touchdown! Touchdown! Eighty thousand people! Touchdown! Right between the goal posts.

JENNY [
distressed
]: Say, Bernard, will you go out in the hall?

BERNARD: What is that noise? Who is it?

JENNY: Mr. Loman. He just got off the elevator.

BERNARD [
getting up
]: Who’s he arguing with?

JENNY: Nobody. There’s nobody with him. I can’t deal with him any more, and your father gets all upset everytime he comes. I’ve got a lot of typing to do, and your father’s waiting to sign it. Will you see him?

WILLY [
entering
]: Touchdown! Touch—[
He sees
JENNY.] Jenny, Jenny, good to see you. How’re ya? Workin’? Or still honest?

JENNY: Fine. How’ve you been feeling?

WILLY: Not much any more, Jenny. Ha, ha! [
He is surprised to see the rackets.
]

BERNARD: Hello, Uncle Willy.

WILLY [
almost shocked
]: Bernard! Well, look who’s here!

BERNARD: How are you? Good to see you.

WILLY: What are you doing here?

BERNARD: Oh, just stopped by to see Pop. Get off my feet till my train leaves. I’m going to Washington in a few minutes.

WILLY: Is he in?

BERNARD: Yes, he’s in his office with the accountant. Sit down.

WILLY [
sitting down
]: What’re you going to do in Washington?

BERNARD: Oh, just a case I’ve got there, Willy.

WILLY: That so? [
Indicating the rackets
] You going to play tennis there?

BERNARD: I’m staying with a friend who’s got a court.

WILLY: Don’t say. His own tennis court. Must be fine people, I bet.

BERNARD: They are, very nice. Dad tells me Biff ’s in town.

WILLY [
with a big smile
]: Yeah, Biff ’s in. Working on a very big deal, Bernard.

BERNARD: What’s Biff doing?

WILLY: Well, he’s been doing very big things in the West. But he decided to establish himself here. Very big. We’re having dinner. Did I hear your wife had a boy?

BERNARD: That’s right. Our second.

WILLY: Two boys! What do you know!

BERNARD: What kind of a deal has Biff got?

WILLY: Well, Bill Oliver—very big sporting-goods man —he wants Biff very badly. Called him in from the West. Long distance, carte blanche, special deliveries. Your friends have their own private tennis court?

BERNARD: You still with the old firm, Willy?

WILLY [
after a pause
]: I’m—I’m overjoyed to see how you made the grade, Bernard, overjoyed. It’s an encouraging thing to see a young man really—really—Looks very good for Biff—very—[
He breaks off, then
] Bernard—[
He is so full of emotion, he breaks off again.
]

BERNARD: What is it, Willy?

WILLY [
small and alone
]: What—what’s the secret?

BERNARD: What secret?

WILLY: How—how did you? Why didn’t he ever catch on?

BERNARD: I wouldn’t know that, Willy.

WILLY [
confidentially, desperately
]: You were his friend, his boyhood friend. There’s something I don’t understand about it. His life ended after that Ebbets Field game. From the age of seventeen nothing good ever happened to him.

BERNARD: He never trained himself for anything.

WILLY: But he did, he did. After high school he took so many correspondence courses. Radio mechanics; television; God knows what, and never made the slightest mark.

BERNARD [
taking off his glasses
]: Willy, do you want to talk candidly?

WILLY [
rising, faces
BERNARD]: I regard you as a very brilliant man, Bernard. I value your advice.

BERNARD: Oh, the hell with the advice, Willy. I couldn’t advise you. There’s just one thing I’ve always wanted to ask you. When he was supposed to graduate, and the math teacher flunked him—

WILLY: Oh, that son-of-a-bitch ruined his life.

BERNARD: Yeah, but, Willy, all he had to do was to go to summer school and make up that subject.

WILLY: That’s right, that’s right.

BERNARD: Did you tell him not to go to summer school?

WILLY: Me? I begged him to go. I ordered him to go!

BERNARD: Then why wouldn’t he go?

WILLY: Why? Why! Bernard, that question has been trailing me like a ghost for the last fifteen years. He flunked the subject, and laid down and died like a hammer hit him!

BERNARD: Take it easy, kid.

WILLY: Let me talk to you—I got nobody to talk to. Bernard, Bernard, was it my fault? Y’see? It keeps going around in my mind, maybe I did something to him. I got nothing to give him.

BERNARD: Don’t take it so hard.

WILLY: Why did he lay down? What is the story there? You were his friend!

BERNARD: Willy, I remember, it was June, and our grades came out. And he’d flunked math.

WILLY: That son-of-a-bitch!

BERNARD: No, it wasn’t right then. Biff just got very angry, I remember, and he was ready to enroll in summer school.

WILLY [
surprised
]: He was?

BERNARD: He wasn’t beaten by it at all. But then, Willy, he disappeared from the block for almost a month. And I got the idea that he’d gone up to New England to see you. Did he have a talk with you then?

[WILLY
stares in silence.
]

BERNARD: Willy?

WILLY [
with a strong edge of resentment in his voice
]: Yeah, he came to Boston. What about it?

BERNARD: Well, just that when he came back—I’ll never forget this, it always mystifies me. Because I’d thought so well of Biff, even though he’d always taken advantage of me. I loved him, Willy, y’know? And he came back after that month and took his sneakers—remember those sneakers with “University of Virginia” printed on them? He was so proud of those, wore them every day. And he took them down in the cellar, and burned them up in the furnace. We had a fist fight. It lasted at least half an hour. Just the two of us, punching each other down the cellar, and crying right through it. I’ve often thought of how strange it was that I knew he’d given up his life. What happened in Boston, Willy?

[WILLY
looks at him as at an intruder.
]

BERNARD: I just bring it up because you asked me.

WILLY [
angrily
]: Nothing. What do you mean, “What happened?” What’s that got to do with anything?

BERNARD: Well, don’t get sore.

WILLY: What are you trying to do, blame it on me? If a boy lays down is that my fault?

BERNARD: Now, Willy, don’t get—

WILLY: Well, don’t—don’t talk to me that way! What does that mean, “What happened?”

CHARLEY: Hey, you’re going to miss that train. [
He waves the bottle.
]

BERNARD: Yeah, I’m going. [
He takes the bottle.
] Thanks, Pop. [
He picks up his rackets and bag.
] Good-bye, Willy, and don’t worry about it. You know, “If at first you don’t succeed . . .”

WILLY: Yes, I believe in that.

BERNARD: But sometimes, Willy, it’s better for a man just to walk away.

WILLY: Walk away?

BERNARD: That’s right.

WILLY: But if you can’t walk away?

BERNARD [
after a slight pause
]: I guess that’s when it’s tough.

[
Extending his hand
] Good-bye, Willy.

WILLY [
shaking
BERNARD’S
hand
]: Good-bye, boy.

CHARLEY [
an arm on
BERNARD’S
shoulder
]: How do you like this kid? Gonna argue a case in front of the Supreme Court.

BERNARD [
protesting
]: Pop!

WILLY [
genuinely shocked, pained, and happy
]: No! The Supreme Court!

BERNARD: I gotta run. ’Bye, Dad!

CHARLEY: Knock ’em dead, Bernard!

[BERNARD
goes off.
]

WILLY [
as
CHARLEY
takes out his wallet
]: The Supreme Court! And he didn’t even mention it!

CHARLEY [
counting out money on the desk
]: He don’t have to—he’s gonna do it.

WILLY: And you never told him what to do, did you? You never took any interest in him.

CHARLEY: My salvation is that I never took any interest in anything. There’s some money—fifty dollars. I got an accountant inside.

WILLY: Charley, look . . . [
With difficulty
] I got my insurance to pay. If you can manage it—I need a hundred and ten dollars.

[CHARLEY
doesn’t reply for a moment; merely stops moving.
]

WILLY: I’d draw it from my bank but Linda would know, and I . . .

CHARLEY: Sit down, Willy.

WILLY [
moving toward the chair
]: I’m keeping an account of everything, remember. I’ll pay every penny back. [
He sits.
]

CHARLEY: Now listen to me, Willy.

WILLY: I want you to know I appreciate . . .

CHARLEY [
sitting down on the table
]: Willy, what’re you doin’? What the hell is goin’ on in your head?

WILLY: Why? I’m simply . . .

CHARLEY: I offered you a job. You can make fifty dollars a week. And I won’t send you on the road.

WILLY: I’ve got a job.

CHARLEY: Without pay? What kind of a job is a job without pay? [
He rises.
] Now, look, kid, enough is enough. I’m no genius but I know when I’m being insulted.

WILLY: Insulted!

CHARLEY: Why don’t you want to work for me?

WILLY: What’s the matter with you? I’ve got a job.

CHARLEY: Then what’re you walkin’ in here every week for?

WILLY [
getting up
]: Well, if you don’t want me to walk in here—

CHARLEY: I am offering you a job.

WILLY: I don’t want your goddam job!

CHARLEY: When the hell are you going to grow up?

WILLY [
furiously
]: You big ignoramus, if you say that to me again I’ll rap you one! I don’t care how big you are! [
He’s ready to fight.
]

[
Pause.
]

CHARLEY [
kindly, going to him
]: How much do you need, Willy?

WILLY: Charley, I’m strapped, I’m strapped. I don’t know what to do. I was just fired.

CHARLEY: Howard fired you?

WILLY: That snotnose. Imagine that? I named him. I named him Howard.

CHARLEY: Willy, when’re you gonna realize that them things don’t mean anything? You named him Howard, but you can’t sell that. The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that.

WILLY: I’ve always tried to think otherwise, I guess. I always felt that if a man was impressive, and well liked, that nothing—

CHARLEY: Why must everybody like you? Who liked J. P. Morgan? Was he impressive? In a Turkish bath he’d look like a butcher. But with his pockets on he was very well liked. Now listen, Willy, I know you don’t like me, and nobody can say I’m in love with you, but I’ll give you a job because—just for the hell of it, put it that way. Now what do you say?

WILLY: I—I just can’t work for you, Charley.

CHARLEY: What’re you, jealous of me?

WILLY: I can’t work for you, that’s all, don’t ask me why.

CHARLEY [
angered, takes out more bills
]: You been jealous of me all your life, you damned fool! Here, pay your insurance. [
He puts the money in
WILLY’S
hand.
]