WOMAN: Yes.

MAN: Even though it makes you miserable?

WOMAN: Yes, even though it makes me miserable.

MAN: Ah, well.

WOMAN: I can’t live without something to care for.

MAN: Then care for something.

WOMAN: I haven’t got anything.

MAN: Get something.

WOMAN: What?

MAN: A lover perhaps.

WOMAN: That sort of thing is disgusting.

MAN: You see how contradictory you are. You say you’re miserable without something to care for and when I suggest something you say that is disgusting.

WOMAN: I want something real. I don’t want any trumped-up affair.

MAN: After all that’s your problem. I can’t solve it for you. [He turns the radio on again.]

WOMAN: Will you leave that radio off?

MAN: No.

WOMAN: It’s driving me to distraction!

MAN: I like this orchestra.

WOMAN: You know that I can’t stand jazz.

MAN [stretching himself]: I love it. It’s America, my dear. Our native land!

WOMAN: Maybe yours, not mine.

MAN: It’s the gold fish bowl that we swim in.

WOMAN: I hate it.

MAN: Because of its barbarism?

WOMAN: It isn’t barbaric. It’s ultra-civilized. It’s neurotic.

MAN: So is America. So am I. So are you. We’re all of us inmates of a vast asylum, bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the South by the Straits of Magellan, on the East by the—

WOMAN [screaming]: Stop! [Pause.]

MAN [quietly]: Your nerves, my dear.

WOMAN [rising slowly]: Yes, my nerves.

MAN: You’d better go to your room and sleep it off.

WOMAN: Yes. Sleep it off. That’s good! [She laughs bitterly and goes toward the door.]

MAN: Would you mind leaving me a cigarette?

WOMAN: Here.

MAN: Thank you.

WOMAN: Not at all. [She goes to the inner door.]

WOMAN: Is there anything else I can do for you, George?

MAN: Nothing.

WOMAN: Are you quite sure?

MAN: Nothing.

WOMAN [screaming]: Nothing, nothing!

[She goes in and slams door. Man gazes at it mildly for a moment.]

THE END

HONOR THE LIVING

CHARACTERS

JOHN

MARY

PRISON GUARD

PRIEST

PART I

Scene: a small apartment in an American city. Time: winter, 1918. A young man and his wife are discovered in a living room, seated together on sofa. The man is still in uniform, having just returned from “overseas.”

MARY: It’s marvelous, darling!

JOHN [absently]: Marvelous? What’s marvelous!

MARY: Having you back—like this!

JOHN [with a short laugh, not entirely pleasant]: Marvelous, is it? [He kisses her.] What do you mean, like this?

MARY: Why, like you are, darling! Uninjured! Completely safe and sound. Oh, if you only knew how frightened I was the whole time, the whole time, John, my heart in my mouth whenever the paper came in the evening, or a letter, or the telephone rang—day in and day out, night after night, that terrible pain, it seemed like, in my heart! That feeling of—of . . .

JOHN [impatiently]: I know, I know! Let’s not speak of it now. It’s over! [There is an almost desperate ring to his voice. He gets up, lighting a cigarette, and fretfully pacing the small room.]