He. That's what I pray in my dreams! She and her spiney broom.On a shelf or mantel in an old fashioned parlor with patterned wallpaper behind it, stand 2 aristocratic bisque porcelain figures, a boy in cerise and a girl in blue. They were modeled as a Dutch boy and girl bent at the hip, hands akimbo, and lips touching in a kiss. But the scene opens with both of them facing away from each other. Behind and between them an ancient ticking mantle clock. The director may gradually allow them to move - first a little then more and more animated throughout.
She. (In a whisper) Manikin!
He. (Coughs from dust) What?
She. Is she on the other side of the door yet?
He. I can't see for sure. I'm turned the other way
. She. What a meddlesome busybody. She's always moving around in that bouncy way. The only thing near to nice on her are those porcelain nails. And that wavy smock - dreadful! -What can you see?
He. The same inventory - the brown leather armchair and ottoman, the tiger skin with its black bounded canines, the yellow, green and purple book spines, and the portrait of milord in top hat.
She. Over here its the rattan rocker with a tear, puffs of steam over a samovar,the quiet piano they bang on and squeak over, and the portrait of milady in her much too busy, lacey gown.
He. (coughs)
She. Why is she always dusting? (Coughs) If she'd only stay away some morning
He. That's what I pray in my dreams! She and her spiney broom.
She. Her daily broom! Daily! Daily!
He. If she didn't sweep -
She. Every corner, cranny and crevice -
He. Then the dust wouldn't rise up like a hive of gnats -
She. Wouldn't crawl, rise, fly, sting! -
He. And cover us all over -
She. Like a powdery spider web - ugh!
He. Dust storms have covered all our lives.
She. You, on your manly red cloak
He. You, on your robin egg gown
She. Ugh!
He. If she didn't sweep, it wouldn't need dusting If she didn't dust, it wouldn't need sweeping!
She. Nor taking down, I should say
He. Yes, with her hot clumsy hands -
She. Her crooked, monkey paw hands.
He. And we wouldn't need putting back -
She. I with my back to you -
He. I with my back to you. I kiss the air dust - bah.
She. Put us back, stack of wires!... It's been hours, days, weeks by the sound of that clunking, lanky-armed monstrosity.
He. The day comes and goes and clanks forward -
She. Even the little moon gizmo waxes and wanes behind us.
He. What's the use of the sun, that was made to see by, if I can't see you. Daily it marches, east to west, peddling its light, flapping its wings, swooping over morning then afternoon, patrolling the grounds with its shiny brass buttons.
She. Manikin!
He. Minikin?
She. Say that again!
He. Why again, don't you know by now?
She. I know but I doubt.
He. Why do you - what do you doubt?
She. Please say it again.
He. (In a somewhat matter of fact voice) What's the use of the sun -
She. (She repeats after him in a quiet voice) What's the use of the Sun ...
He. That was made to see by,
She. That was made to see by
He. If I can't see you.
She. If I can't see you... Aah. If you hadn't said that again my doubt would have filled a balloon big enough to cover Paris.
He. Doubt? More doubt? Worry? More Worry?
She. (Doesn't hear him and continues) And although I can't move unless somebody tilts me, propels me, twirls me in circles, one of these days when the sun isn't shining, I would have slipped over the edge of this marbley hard shelf -
He. Minikin!
She. And fallen to that even stouter floor in so many fragments, that they'd never paste sweet Minikin together again. Poor Humpty, poor me. (Somewhat romantically) poor shelf.
He. Minikin!
She. They'd have to set another here - some Ninikin, I'm sure!
He. Why do you prattle and chatter so?
She. Because of my doubt and worry. Because as sure as I am that I sit here with my knees painted into a knot - that that human creature loves ... you!
He. Loves me?
She. And you HER! There I've said it.
He. Minikin!
She. When she takes us down, it's you she holds longer ...
He. Oh ...
She. I am sufficiently feminine and certainly old enough with my gladstone of a hundred and seventy years, to know these things.
He. But ...
She. I can see, I can feel by her manner of grasping me and flicking me with the wet end of that mop, that that - that creature hates me. She'd like to drop me, that's what she's scheming like a fiend to do!
He. Minikin!
She. Don't you venture your foot forward to defend her! You are a babe in the woods, a booby - you don't know these live women! When I'm left in the right position to see, I make notes how she fondles you, pets you like a parrot with her finger tip - the very porcelain covered ones that she flaunts - blows a pinch of dust from your eye with her softest hummingbird puffs, holds you off at arm's length and fixes you with her hawk nosed 'glazed' look, and actually clutches you against her rubbery cheek, that cheek that fades in and out of color - Only after all that will she release you! If she didn't turn us apart so often, I wouldn't charge her with a courthouse full of insinuation. But now I know she loves you. She's as jealous as I am. And poor little me, dead to resist in her live power. Manikin?
He. Minikin?
She. If you could see me, the way you look at here, you'd love me the way you do her. Oh woe of my existence. Who made me what I am? Who dreamed up this motionless state of clay
He. Minikin.
She. What?
He. Will you listen to me?
She. Yes.
He. I love you (he whispers)
She. No!
He.You doubt that?
She. Yes.
He. Oh once upon a time, perhaps early on when I was plastic, yet warm to the touch and fresh from the kiln, I used my eyes to look in every direction. But now its you alone.
She. (Thinking it over) Perhaps once. But you don't love me now. Not since you saw that, sometimes on, sometimes off, rose cheek of that bone sack.
He. Minikin, so much heat and nonsense from so little powder!
She. If I could move about the way she could - not those pierrot flopping feet but dainty white feet that could twinkle and twirl. Ah then I'd dance with such waltzy charm, you'd think me a winged fairy. If I could but let down my hair, and raise my nicely painted brows, or shrug my stiff shoulders like a queen or a countess, If I could twist my head, tilt my nose, this way and that like a long necked, cloud tinted swan; you'd ogle my eyes, like scientists that of peacocks, you'd marvel and debate their color - jade colored, nay, violet, nay, pools of deep clear, brown or ice clear grey? If I could only move a little inch, you could see what I could be! But no, it is change , it's change you men ask of us women.
He. Change?
She. You are eye-sick,heart-sick, all but love sick of seeing the same foolish porcelain thing, a hundred years old, a hundred and fifty, and sixty, and seventy... 200 perhaps. I don't know how old I am.
He. Not a breath or exhalation older than I, nor one younger... Minikin?
She. Yes?
He. Will you listen to me?
She. No
He. Will you listen to me?
She. Yes, If you'll tell me... if you'll prove to me, so that my last particle of pasted and crack painted dust, the tiniest speck of a molecule, the merest electron -
He. Are you listening?
She. Uh huh.
He. (Pause) to begin with ... I dislike, suspect, deplore, and at best feel pathos for what is called humanity - or the animate, as opposed to us Inanimates.
She. You say that so wisely. You're such a philosopher, a Rousseau of the mantle.
He. That which is able to move can never be steadfast. Let us consider the creature at hand to whom you have often referred with an undue excess of admiration adulterated with an unwarranted excess of envy.
She. Go on.
He. I can only see part of her at once. She moves into my vision then out - much like a monster at the window, thus she is doomed to be partial.
She. And what of the parts you see Manikin?
He. Ugh. they are commonplace and unsightly. Her face is, as you say, inconstant and only rose-tinted on occasion. Perhaps she tips and the red paint sloshes about inside her. Furthermore it is veined with blue streaks, and her skin bags up in folds. Her eyes, like a hen; her brows perched above, still have parts of the paintbrushes stuck to them; her movements are gadfly-ish, and unspeakably ungainly with bones clinking about; and her hair - well, a movable nest!
She. Ah such dulcet phrases - you play me like a harpsichord. Sidney to my Stella.
He. Even were some parts as beautiful as thou - let's say you lent her your eyes, and the exquisite head which holds them like a cup with two last beads of absinth, like a stone with two last drops of rain, jade colored, nay, violet, nay, pools of deep clear, brown or ice clear grey?
She. Faster Manikin. Faster!
He. But there's the rub. Words were never given to man to phrase such a one as you. Inaminate symbols, can never embrace, embody, or hold the reality of the dream that you are. Geometry does not equate in this sphere. I wind down.
She. Ahhh
He. And even were she so beautiful as thou - and I don't waste breath or clicks of the clock in saying it is so - she couldn't stay beautiful.
She. Stay beautiful?
He. Human-ers and human-ettes change with each tocking movement. They are furnaces on wheels that burn out - hair first to ash, then strand by strand, it falls like brittle autumn leaves. They are a race of giants. When this one rolls into view, her size dwarfs the room. She overwhelms my eyes. They can take in but one portion at a time. I see one third and two thirds are blind spots. I'm left with a fleeting glance - partial focus in the middle of hazy edges. But you (he widens his arms as if to embrace her) .. you are more precious to me, for your compact steadfastness. And more now than ever - more now than even when we first were crated in the same bow tied, velvet lined, box.
She. And she the interferer?
He. Pity for these, penetrates still deeper when one determines their inner life, as you and I have pondered their outer. Their inner changes more desperately than even the facade shows!
She. How so dear orator
He. They have what philosophers term, moods, and moods are more pervious to modulation than pools to idle breezes. These blurry folks may say, to begin with, 'I love you." This may be true, I'm assured - as true as when we say, 'I love you." But they can only say, "I love you", so long as the mood breathes, so long as the puddle resists evaporation. They are honest. They mean what they say passionately, tenaciously, tragically. But when the mood languishes, they have to say, if they are honest "I do not love you." Or they have to say, 'I love you' to another.
She. Another?
He. Now you and I - we've said that to each other for a hundred and seventy years and we'll continue to say it always for as long as time unrolls.
She. Always.... Love....
He. The life of an animate is a procession of little sleeps with but a secret sorrowing candle, sputtering lower and lower, on the path to the gray end. The life of an Inamimate is as serenely enduring - as all still things are.
She. Still things?
He. Recall our childhood in the English museum before we were forced march, from shelf to shelf, to end up in this dreadful Yankee salon. Do you remember that little old Greek vase with the charming painted dancing maiden, or that old Roman medallion of the girl with a head of a goddess, ...
She. Manikin, Manikin, were they so beautiful as I? Did you love them, too? Why do you bring them back, burning with passion inside their own memory boxes?
He. To compare them with you. They were not so beautiful. I spoke of them, recalled them, designated them from thin air, because they were ages old and, and…
She. And, and?
He. And we might live as long as they - as they did and do. I limned their existence for contrast and deduction.
She. Deduction?
He. Deducing this - I love you.
She. Then even though that creature has turned us apart, you still see only me?
He. I see you.
She. Even though you haven't seen me for hours, days, weeks - with your dear blue eyes, you still see me?
He. I see you.
She. Even though you are properly set, calm, and smooth, on the outside; you are kiln warm and passionate inside?
He. Yes, but not serenely set, calm, and smooth. One small crack resists patching She. Is it the worry that that fool of a servant should break both our futures - our great happy centuries ahead - by dropping me, throwing me down in her fit of old age?
He. I should take an immediate step off this lead footed shelf.
She. But you cannot move!
He. The good wind would cast a breeze, fate would be kind and re unite us as mixed dust puffing, around her rampant broom.
She. Oh you are being silly now. (She laughs) May I confess?
He. What?
She. I wasn't jealous of that woman.
He. You weren't?
She. I wanted to hear you talk.
He. Oh dissembler.
She. Not unkindly.
He. Then the love stands as said and written.
She. Everlastingly?
He. Until this shelf crumbles! (he stomps the mantle)
She. And tumbles down to dust! (She stomps the mantle too. Then they kiss as the clock strikes 2:00)
The END