Tom Stoppard Plays 3 Read online

  OTIS: Most people have more trouble.

  PHILO: Most people would. Listen, Otis, back in the East you can’t do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything. They believe in papers. Papers are power. And my job was papers.

  OTIS: And the shooting?

  PHILO: I don’t know – I’ll never know.

  OTIS: What do you want, Marin?

  PHILO: I want a home. A country. I think you owe me that.

  OTIS: I don’t owe you a thing except your gratuity, and that’s in the bank.

  PHILO: I don’t want it. I want nationality, Otis.

  (OTIS regards him coolly.)

  OTIS: We’ve got papers too, you know.

  42. EXT. DISCOTHEQUE. NIGHT

  LAUREL and HARDY have found the car. Parked. Empty.

  43. INT. DISCOTHEQUE. SAME TIME

  LAUREL and HARDY find the NURSE dancing with her boyfriend, two rockers in a room jammed with rockers, LAUREL, with old-world courtesy, ‘cuts in’, a custom clearly new to the BOYFRIEND, who would resist but HARDY gathers him in a friendly embrace with a hearty cry of recognition. The BOYFRIEND protests, HARDY kisses him on each cheek, and lifts him an inch off the floor and moves him like a shop-window dummy behind a pillar and puts him down. The BOYFRIEND hits HARDY, who starts a casual sort of fight which quickly achieves Hardy’s intention: two BOUNDERS converge on HARDY and the BOYFRIEND and expel them from the premises. HARDY plays it soft.

  44. EXT. DISCOTHEQUE. SAME TIME

  HARDY and the BOYFRIEND are shoved out by the BOUNCERS. HARDY shakes himself loose and lights a cigar, offering one to the BOYFRIEND. The BOYFRIEND swings at HARDY, who massacres him in a few seconds, HARDY settles against the wall to wait for LAUREL.

  45. INT. DISCOTHEQUE. SAME TIME

  Everybody is dancing appropriately to the rock music except LAUREL, who is firmly foxtrotting with the helpless and bewildered NURSE.

  NURSE: What do you want?

  LAUREL: I have a message from a friend. He asked me to give you this. (In his ‘leading hand’, the one holding her hand, he is clutching the photo of Philo. He turns the photo towards her.)

  NURSE: What’s that?

  LAUREL: You know him. Think back.

  (The gamble pays off.)

  NURSE: Oh yes. What do I want with a picture of Mr Kramer?

  LAUREL: Kramer. Exactly. He brought his monkey to the animal doctor and instantly he was in love.

  NURSE: Monkey? What monkey? I knew him when I worked in the library. That was a year ago.

  LAUREL: The library, by all the saints. (Pause) He lived near the library?

  NURSE: In the Olympia Hotel. I was always sending him reminders.

  LAUREL: Reminders?

  NURSE: For the books. Where is my friend? Will you stop making this stupid dance, you make me ridiculous.

  LAUREL: Listen, you’re dancing with a genius. (He shakes his head scornfully.) Monkey …

  46. INT. FOYER OF OLYMPIA HOTEL. NIGHT

  LAUREL and HARDY arrive. It’s a small hotel, and there is only a DESK CLERK around, LAUREL is still smirking and laughing to himself.

  HARDY looks grim. They arrive at the desk.

  CLERK: Good evening.

  HARDY: What room is Mr Kramer?

  CLERK: Kramer? There is no Mr Kramer.

  (HARDY reaches out for the CLERK’s throat, drags him over the counter and stands him up.)

  HARDY: Do not tell me there is no Mr Kramer.

  LAUREL: (Amused) The one with the monkey.

  CLERK: Oh – him.

  (The smile drops off LAUREL’s face. HARDY turns to look at him expressionlessly.)

  HARDY: Yes. Him.

  47. INT. THE BAR. EVENING

  Some kind of bar game going on. Skittles perhaps. CAROL is watching it. LOCALS playing and drinking. She reaches for her camera to take a picture, starts to check that she’s turned the film on, pauses, frowns at the camera. She opens the camera. There is no film in it now.

  48. EXT. COUNTRYSIDE. EVENING

  PHILO is moving rapidly towards the car, short-cutting across rocks. From behind a rock, a rifle pokes at him.

  Close-up of trigger being squeezed.

  It’s a cap-rifle. The BOY stands up gleefully. He’s got a cowboy hat on, too. PHILO turns the other way and sees ACHERSON.

  ACHERSON: Hello, old man. Bad news.

  PHILO: The car will not take you away after all.

  ACHERSON: Right. Tank’s holed.

  PHILO: Of course. You’re bad news for me, Acherson.

  ACHERSON: How’s that, old man?

  (PHILO goes up to the car and looks in. He takes out one of the boxes lying on the back seat. The box has a picture of a train set and some writing, PHILO looks at the box and tosses it back.)

  PHILO: So you’re in the toy business.

  ACHERSON: That’s it. Santa Claus.

  PHILO: You might as well go home.

  ACHERSON: Old man, I don’t understand you at all. How far is that garage?

  PHILO: (Pause) It’s not a garage. It’s a pump.

  ACHERSON: This is a welding job. It seems we’re here for the night. (He moves to walk back.)

  PHILO: Acherson! – you’re wasting your time! I don’t owe you people a thing!

  ACHERSON: Anything you say, old man. (He strides off.)

  BOY: Is he the debt collector?

  PHILO: No – not the one I feared. This one I despise.

  49. INT. CONTINUATION OF FLASHBACK

  Two locomotives race past each other.

  If’s a toy train set, or rather several of them combined into an extensive layout, on the floor of a store room which contains many boxes of toys, including boxes identical to the one seen in Acherson’s car in the last scene.

  PHILO is playing trains.

  The door is audibly unlocked and opened.

  PHILO: (Without turning round) I’m not hungry, take it away.

  (But it’s OTIS, accompanied by SANDERS.)

  OTIS: Well, you’ve managed to pass the time, I see. I’m glad somebody plays with the window-dressing.

  PHILO: Where’ve you been?

  OTIS: Taking a personal interest, in London.

  (OTIS gets interested in the train set and squats down to mess with it. Pretty soon trains are whizzing round, with OTIS working the points as he talks.)

  PHILO: I could have come with you.

  OTIS: On your papers?

  PHILO: Next time I’ll come out with a British passport and a working permit. Look, can’t we just go and discuss it over a drink somewhere?

  OTIS: As of now you’re free. Sorry it took so long.

  PHILO: Free? Free to do what? go where?

  OTIS: Home.

  PHILO: London?

  (OTIS looks at him.)

  OTIS: Home.

  PHILO: What are you talking about? You know what would happen to me if I went back there … God, I need a drink …

  OTIS: What made you hit the bottle?

  PHILO: Hit the bottle?

  OTIS: You made a fool of yourself at a public dinner on the seventh; you were drunk at a reception for the Polish delegation the week you came out, and at another for the Bulgarians the week before that. It seems you even drank in your office. Why was that?

  PHILO: Well, I congratulate you. I also drank in bed. Did no one tell you?

  OTIS: Why?

  (SANDERS has squatted down and is messing with the trains but he gets the points switched wrong and there is a minor derailment.) (Irritably) Sanders, what the hell do you think you’re doing? (To PHILO) Why?

  PHILO: Nerves.

  OTIS: What did you have to be nervous about?

  PHILO: That’s a damn silly question.

  OTIS: What were you nervous about? (Pause.) You were all right. A comrade. Good record. Impeccable behaviour. Regular promotion. Suddenly you had nerves.

  PHILO: I had decided to get out.

  OTIS: Why?

  PHILO: I told you.


  OTIS: Speeches. Speeches about maps and schoolchildren. Why did you get out?

  PHILO: Otis, I’m not talking to you any more.

  OTIS: And how did you get out? (For this he abandons the train set and looks straight into PHILO’s eyes.) Think before you reply. The right answer might get you where you want to go.

  PHILO: I’m telling you the truth. I told you why and I told you how.

  OTIS: You gave yourself false papers.

  PHILO: Not false. The real thing, falsely obtained. That’s a trick which perhaps only one man in the country could have played, and only once, but I was the man.

  OTIS: It sounds plausible. It might even have been possible. (He spells it out now.) Only you were already blown.

  PHILO: (Total disbelief) No.

  OTIS: You were blown.

  PHILO: I tell you I wasn’t.

  OTIS: How long had they been on to you?

  PHILO: If they were on to me I didn’t know it.

  OTIS: You knew it because they told you.

  PHILO: No! They had nothing on me! For God’s sake, I was sending you stuff almost to the week I left.

  OTIS: Fakes.

  PHILO: Don’t be stupid – the stuff was from my own department.

  OTIS: They were fakes, Marin. The Reschev Memorandum was a fake, and so was the Geller business. Blinds, both of them, and that takes us back four months.

  PHILO: You’re wrong –

  OTIS: I’m not wrong, because Geller’s dead. What do you think I was doing in Vienna when you showed up?

  PHILO: (Shaken) I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. If they were using me I didn’t know it.

  OTIS: Then how did you get out?

  (PHILO now understands the implication.)

  PHILO: You think I made a deal with them?

  OTIS: I think you might have. A man working from inside my operation …

  PHILO: You’re mad. And they’re not stupid. If I had made a deal they’d expect you to think of it.

  OTIS: So they shot that poor bastard Comisky.

  (PHILO is shaken by that.)

  PHILO: Oh … Otis, if you think that, there’s no talking to you.

  OTIS: I don’t like that shooting. It makes you look too clean for words, it’s like a diploma. I don’t like it at all. Those babies don’t shoot the wrong man, and they don’t shoot anybody on a frontier railroad track like it was their nomination for an Oscar. If they wanted you they could have taken you any time you stepped outside your front door. Why didn’t they?

  PHILO: If you want to know what I think, I think now that they were on to me, they found out I’d gone; but they didn’t know where I was till I showed my papers on that last train, and then there was no time to do things properly, just a quick bullet at the frontier for the man with the monkey.

  OTIS: You’d never have got so far.

  PHILO: I was careful, and I had the right papers.

  OTIS: You would have been followed for weeks, everywhere.

  They would have known everything you were doing.

  PHILO: How do you know? Maybe I had a tail, maybe not, Maybe I lost him or he lost me. Maybe I was luckier than I knew. I don’t know, and you don’t know.

  OTIS: I didn’t know. But there’s a doubt, and that’s enough. The British don’t want you. Do you, Sanders?

  (SANDERS says nothing.)

  PHILO: Now wait a minute – I’m not asking you for a job. But a home is one thing you owe me. (He turns to SANDERS.) I was your man, I played your game for fifteen years, and now I want to come home.

  SANDERS: I’m sorry … You’re a bad risk, that’s all. I really am sorry, Marin … you know what they’re like.

  OTIS: They didn’t like the Reschev thing going wrong. It cost a lot of money. And they didn’t like Geller being dead. I don’t like it either. In fact if I had my way, I wouldn’t let you walk away quite so fast and easy.

  (OTIS turns to leave the room. On his turn, PHILO moves forward in anger to grab him, but SANDERS restrains PHILO; which saves PHILO’s life, because OTIS has turned back with a gun in his hand. This tableau slowly relaxes.)

  PHILO: Yes … you really believe it, don’t you? You think I came over to work from your factory.

  OTIS: I doubt they were hoping for the jackpot, not in the factory but maybe somewhere on the road … I guess they’d know I wouldn’t employ a Russian national in the factory, however clean he was.

  PHILO: (His worst moment) I’m not Russian!

  (Even OTIS is taken aback by that.)

  OTIS: Like you said, look at the maps. (He goes out.)

  50. INT. SANDERS’S OFFICE. DAY

  From a zip-bag, SANDERS is taking out the possessions which had been taken from PHILO on his arrival.

  PHILO watches him from the chair, his energy gone.

  SANDERS: Wallet … money … diary … lighter.

  (The lighter is in pieces. SANDERS reassembles it.)

  PHILO: You’re making a mistake.

  SANDERS: It’s like this, Marin. There are two kinds of mistake Otis can make. He can let a bad apple in or keep a good apple out. If he makes the first mistake things could go very badly for Otis. If he makes the second mistake – well, who’s going to ever know? (Hands over the lighter.) Lighter. (Opens a cigarette case.) How many cigarettes did you have in here?

  PHILO: I don’t know.

  (SANDERS reaches into his pocket for his own case and feeds a few of his cigarettes into Philo’s case.)

  SANDERS: The Americans are so touching. They still expect to find something inside a cigarette.

  PHILO: Where am I supposed to go?

  SANDERS: That’s up to you. Anywhere they’ll have you. Shop around.

  PHILO: Shop? I can’t even move. I’ve got to have papers – you know that.

  SANDERS: I could mention a couple of embassies to you. It’s most unfortunate. There used to be quite a few places, but nowadays it’s all one big place, underneath.

  (PHILO stares out of the window.)

  PHILO: They’ll be looking for me. I think you know that, Sanders.

  SANDERS: (Evenly) If they find you I’ll know it. It really isn’t my show, you know.

  PHILO: Sanders, I’ll tell you this now. Otis is going to be looking for me himself. Perhaps next month, perhaps next year – it could be longer; but that Reschev paper was the real thing, and when Otis realizes that, he’s going to need me badly. He’s going to need me to save his little war, and his career. But you tell him not to waste his time, because now I wouldn’t spit on him, not if he was on fire.

  51. INT. PHILO’S ROOM. NIGHT

  PHILO, drinking, alone, lying on the bed.

  He hears sounds outside the window and goes to look. In the yard, a horse is pulling the Fiat in, with the BOY at the horse’s head, and ACHERSON at the wheel. ACHERSON gets out of the car, and looks up steadily at PHILO while PHILO stares back.

  52. INT. SECOND (ACHERSONS’) ROOM. SAME TIME

  CAROL also watching from the window.

  This room is bare … two beds, a couple of chairs, a washstand.

  53. INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR. NIGHT

  The DESK CLERK leads LAUREL and HARDY to one of the bedroom doors. He knocks. The door is opened by a wild-looking middle-aged woman with a parrot on her shoulder.

  WOMAN: What is it, Joseph?

  JOSEPH: There are some men, they wish to speak with you.

  (LAUREL and HARDY move in politely but firmly.)

  54. INT. WOMAN’S ROOM. SAME TIME

  The room is a menagerie of pets of all kinds, and consequently squalid.

  WOMAN: The maid refuses to clean my room, Joseph. Will you speak to her?

  HARDY: We are friends of Mr Kramer.

  CLERK: You remember Mr Kramer? With the monkey?

  WOMAN: Of course. I have not seen him since he left here.

  CLERK: These men were wondering if you knew … if he told you where he was going.

  WOMAN: He was my friend.

  HARDY: Naturally.r />
  WOMAN: As you see I have many friends, but he was unique, you understand.

  LAUREL: I understand. He talked to you.

  WOMAN: All my friends talk to me.

  LAUREL: Oh yes. (To parrot) Where’s Kramer? (He tries to ruffle the parrot’s neck and gets nipped. He looks around.) Which is your best friend?

  WOMAN: (Indicating parrot) My oldest friend is Tamburlaine. He is very old.

  LAUREL: Yes … well … here’s a friend. (He strokes a puppy, making friends.)

  HARDY: About Mr Kramer. Is he in town?

  WOMAN: No, in the country.

  HARDY: In the country? Where?

  WOMAN: It’s a secret.

  HARDY: A secret? We’re his friends.

  WOMAN: That’s what he said. He said you’ll come and say you are his friends.

  (LAUREL produces a wicked looking flick-knife and snaps the blade out, with his other hand holding up the puppy by the scruff of its neck. The WOMAN and the CLERK stare at him in disbelief. LAUREL smiles.)

  HARDY: I’m sorry about my friend. Now, for one dog – where is Mr Kramer?

  55. INT. ACHERSONS’ ROOM. NIGHT

  ACHERSON and CAROL are lying on their backs on separate beds, not talking, perhaps smoking. Faint music is heard – a local band.

  ACHERSON: Well, here we are.

  CAROL: Here we are.

  ACHERSON: Boris says that Stanislavsky the welder will be brought from Zlens in the morning.

  CAROL: How big is that hole?

  (ACHERSON makes a small hole with his finger and thumb.)

  Did nobody think of chewing-gum?

  ACHERSON: Stanislavsky works with nothing else. It’s his method.

  CAROL: (Amiably) Oh, shut up.

  ACHERSON: (Pause) Well, I think I’ll get drunk, then.

  (A knock at the door.)

  CAROL: Yes, why don’t you? Come in!

  (PHILO enters.)

  PHILO: Excuse me.

  CAROL: Hello, Mr Kramer. Thank you for arranging the room.