Death of a Salesman (9 page)

BEN [
giving great weight to each word, and with a certain vicious audacity
]: William, when I walked into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And, by God, I was rich! [
He goes off into darkness around the right corner of the house.
]

WILLY: . . . was rich! That’s just the spirit I want to imbue them with! To walk into a jungle! I was right! I was right! I was right!

LINDA: Willy, dear? Willy?

WILLY: I was right!

LINDA: Did you have some cheese? [
He can’t answer.
] It’s very late, darling. Come to bed, heh?

WILLY [
looking straight up
]: Gotta break your neck to see a star in this yard.

LINDA: You coming in?

WILLY: Whatever happened to that diamond watch fob? Remember? When Ben came from Africa that time? Didn’t he give me a watch fob with a diamond in it?

LINDA: You pawned it, dear. Twelve, thirteen years ago. For Biff’s radio correspondence course.

WILLY: Gee, that was a beautiful thing. I’ll take a walk.

LINDA: But you’re in your slippers.

WILLY [
starting to go around the house at the left
]: I was right! I was! [
Half to
LINDA,
as he goes, shaking his head
] What a man! There was a man worth talking to. I was right!

LINDA [
calling after
WILLY]: But in your slippers, Willy!

BIFF: What is he doing out there?

LINDA: Sh!

BIFF: God Almighty, Mom, how long has he been doing this?

LINDA: Don’t, he’ll hear you.

BIFF: What the hell is the matter with him?

LINDA: It’ll pass by morning.

BIFF: Shouldn’t we do anything?

LINDA: Oh, my dear, you should do a lot of things, but there’s nothing to do, so go to sleep.

[HAPPY
comes down the stairs and sits on the steps.
]

HAPPY: I never heard him so loud, Mom.

LINDA: Well, come around more often; you’ll hear him.

BIFF: Why didn’t you ever write me about this, Mom?

LINDA: How would I write to you? For over three months you had no address.

BIFF: I was on the move. But you know I thought of you all the time. You know that, don’t you, pal?

LINDA: I know, dear, I know. But he likes to have a letter. Just to know that there’s still a possibility for better things.

BIFF: He’s not like this all the time, is he?

LINDA: It’s when you come home he’s always the worst.

BIFF: When I come home?

LINDA: When you write you’re coming, he’s all smiles, and talks about the future, and—he’s just wonderful. And then the closer you seem to come, the more shaky he gets, and then, by the time you get here, he’s arguing, and he seems angry at you. I think it’s just that maybe he can’t bring himself to—to open up to you. Why are you so hateful to each other? Why is that?

BIFF [
evasively
]: I’m not hateful, Mom.

LINDA: But you no sooner come in the door than you’re fighting!

BIFF: I don’t know why. I mean to change. I’m tryin’, Mom, you understand?

LINDA: Are you home to stay now?

BIFF: I don’t know. I want to look around, see what’s doin’.

LINDA: Biff, you can’t look around all your life, can you?

BIFF: I just can’t take hold, Mom. I can’t take hold of some kind of a life.

LINDA: Biff, a man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime.

BIFF: Your hair . . . [
He touches her hair.
] Your hair got so gray.

LINDA: Oh, it’s been gray since you were in high school. I just stopped dyeing it, that’s all.

BIFF: Dye it again, will ya? I don’t want my pal looking old. [
He smiles.
]

LINDA: You’re such a boy! You think you can go away for a year and . . . You’ve got to get it into your head now that one day you’ll knock on this door and there’ll be strange people here—

BIFF: What are you talking about? You’re not even sixty, Mom.

LINDA: But what about your father?

BIFF [
lamely
]: Well, I meant him too.

HAPPY: He admires Pop.

LINDA: Biff, dear, if you don’t have any feeling for him, then you can’t have any feeling for me.

BIFF: Sure I can, Mom.

LINDA: No. You can’t just come to see me, because I love him. [
With a threat, but only a threat, of tears
] He’s the dearest man in the world to me, and I won’t have anyone making him feel unwanted and low and blue. You’ve got to make up your mind now, darling, there’s no leeway any more. Either he’s your father and you pay him that respect, or else you’re not to come here. I know he’s not easy to get along with—nobody knows that better than me—but . . .

WILLY [
from the left, with a laugh
]: Hey, hey, Biffo!

BIFF [
starting to go out after
WILLY]: What the hell is the matter with him? [HAPPY
stops him.
]

LINDA: Don’t—don’t go near him!

BIFF: Stop making excuses for him! He always, always wiped the floor with you. Never had an ounce of respect for you.

HAPPY: He’s always had respect for—

BIFF: What the hell do you know about it?

HAPPY [
surlily
]: Just don’t call him crazy!

BIFF: He’s got no character—Charley wouldn’t do this. Not in his own house—spewing out that vomit from his mind.

HAPPY: Charley never had to cope with what he’s got to.

BIFF: People are worse off than Willy Loman. Believe me, I’ve seen them!

LINDA: Then make Charley your father, Biff. You can’t do that, can you? I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person. You called him crazy—

BIFF: I didn’t mean—

LINDA: No, a lot of people think he’s lost his—balance. But you don’t have to be very smart to know what his trouble is. The man is exhausted.

HAPPY: Sure!

LINDA: A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. He works for a company thirty-six years this March, opens up unheard-of territories to their trademark, and now in his old age they take his salary away.

HAPPY [
indignantly
]: I didn’t know that, Mom.

LINDA: You never asked, my dear! Now that you get your spending money someplace else you don’t trouble your mind with him.

HAPPY: But I gave you money last—

LINDA: Christmas time, fifty dollars! To fix the hot water it cost ninety-seven fifty! For five weeks he’s been on straight commission, like a beginner, an unknown!

BIFF: Those ungrateful bastards!

LINDA: Are they any worse than his sons? When he brought them business, when he was young, they were glad to see him. But now his old friends, the old buyers that loved him so and always found some order to hand him in a pinch—they’re all dead, retired. He used to be able to make six, seven calls a day in Boston. Now he takes his valises out of the car and puts them back and takes them out again and he’s exhausted. Instead of walking he talks now. He drives seven hundred miles, and when he gets there no one knows him any more, no one welcomes him. And what goes through a man’s mind, driving seven hundred miles home without having earned a cent? Why shouldn’t he talk to himself? Why? When he has to go to Charley and borrow fifty dollars a week and pretend to me that it’s his pay? How long can that go on? How long? You see what I’m sitting here and waiting for? And you tell me he has no character? The man who never worked a day but for your benefit? When does he get the medal for that? Is this his reward—to turn around at the age of sixty-three and find his sons, who he loved better than his life, one a philandering bum—

HAPPY: Mom!

LINDA: That’s all you are, my baby! [
To
BIFF] And you! What happened to the love you had for him? You were such pals! How you used to talk to him on the phone every night! How lonely he was till he could come home to you!

BIFF: All right, Mom. I’ll live here in my room, and I’ll get a job. I’ll keep away from him, that’s all.

LINDA: No, Biff. You can’t stay here and fight all the time.

BIFF: He threw me out of this house, remember that.

LINDA: Why did he do that? I never knew why.

BIFF: Because I know he’s a fake and he doesn’t like anybody around who knows!

LINDA: Why a fake? In what way? What do you mean?

BIFF: Just don’t lay it all at my feet. It’s between me and him—that’s all I have to say. I’ll chip in from now on. He’ll settle for half my pay check. He’ll be all right. I’m going to bed. [
He starts for the stairs.
]

LINDA: He won’t be all right.

BIFF [
turning on the stairs, furiously
]: I hate this city and I’ll stay here. Now what do you want?

LINDA: He’s dying, Biff.

[HAPPY
turns quickly to her, shocked.
]

BIFF [
after a pause
]: Why is he dying?

LINDA: He’s been trying to kill himself.

BIFF [
with great horror
]: How?

LINDA: I live from day to day.

BIFF: What’re you talking about?

LINDA: Remember I wrote you that he smashed up the car again? In February?

BIFF: Well?

LINDA: The insurance inspector came. He said that they have evidence. That all these accidents in the last year—weren’t—weren’t—accidents.

HAPPY: How can they tell that? That’s a lie.

LINDA: It seems there’s a woman . . . [
She takes a breath as
]

BIFF [
sharply but contained
]:} What woman?

LINDA [
simultaneously
]: } . . . and this woman . . .

LINDA: What?

BIFF: Nothing. Go ahead.

LINDA: What did you say?

BIFF: Nothing. I just said what woman?

HAPPY: What about her?

LINDA: Well, it seems she was walking down the road and saw his car. She says that he wasn’t driving fast at all, and that he didn’t skid. She says he came to that little bridge, and then deliberately smashed into the railing, and it was only the shallowness of the water that saved him.

BIFF: Oh, no, he probably just fell asleep again.

LINDA: I don’t think he fell asleep.

BIFF: Why not?

LINDA: Last month . . . [
With great difficulty
] Oh, boys, it’s so hard to say a thing like this! He’s just a big stupid man to you, but I tell you there’s more good in him than in many other people. [
She chokes, wipes her eyes.
] I was looking for a fuse. The lights blew out, and I went down the cellar. And behind the fuse box—it happened to fall out—was a length of rubber pipe—just short.

HAPPY: No kidding?

LINDA: There’s a little attachment on the end of it. I knew right away. And sure enough, on the bottom of the water heater there’s a new little nipple on the gas pipe.

HAPPY [
angrily
]: That—jerk.

BIFF: Did you have it taken off?

LINDA: I’m—I’m ashamed to. How can I mention it to him? Every day I go down and take away that little rubber pipe. But, when he comes home, I put it back where it was. How can I insult him that way? I don’t know what to do. I live from day to day, boys. I tell you, I know every thought in his mind. It sounds so old-fashioned and silly, but I tell you he put his whole life into you and you’ve turned your backs on him. [
She is bent over in the chair, weeping, her face in her hands.
] Biff, I swear to God! Biff, his life is in your hands!

HAPPY [
to
BIFF]: How do you like that damned fool!

BIFF [
kissing her
]: All right, pal, all right. It’s all settled now. I’ve been remiss. I know that, Mom. But now I’ll stay, and I swear to you, I’ll apply myself. [
Kneeling in front of her, in a fever of self-reproach
] It’s just—you see, Mom, I don’t fit in business. Not that I won’t try. I’ll try, and I’ll make good.

HAPPY: Sure you will. The trouble with you in business was you never tried to please people.

BIFF: I know, I—

HAPPY: Like when you worked for Harrison’s. Bob Harrison said you were tops, and then you go and do some damn fool thing like whistling whole songs in the elevator like a comedian.

BIFF [
against
HAPPY]: So what? I like to whistle sometimes.

HAPPY: You don’t raise a guy to a responsible job who whistles in the elevator!

LINDA: Well, don’t argue about it now.

HAPPY: Like when you’d go off and swim in the middle of the day instead of taking the line around.

BIFF [
his resentment rising
]: Well, don’t you run off? You take off sometimes, don’t you? On a nice summer day?

HAPPY: Yeah, but I cover myself!

LINDA: Boys!

HAPPY: If I’m going to take a fade the boss can call any number where I’m supposed to be and they’ll swear to him that I just left. I’ll tell you something that I hate to say, Biff, but in the business world some of them think you’re crazy.