The Iceman Cometh (3 page)

There are three rows of tables, from front to back. Three are in the front line. The one at left-front has four chairs; the one at center-front, four; the one at right-front, five. At rear of, and half between, front tables one and two is a table of the second row with five chairs. A table, similarly placed at rear of front tables two and three, also has five chairs. The third row of tables, four chairs to one and six to the other, is against the rear wall on either side of the door
.

At right of this dividing curtain is a section of the barroom, with the end of the bar seen at rear, a door to the hall at left of it. At front is a tab
le
with four chairs. Light comes from the street windows off right, the gray subdued light of early morning in a narrow street. In the back room
,
LARRY
SLADE
and
HUGO KALMAR
are at the table at left-front
,
HUGO
in a
chair facing right
,
LARRY
at rear of table facing front, with an empty chair between them. A fourth chair is at right of table, facing left
.
HUGO
is a small an in his
la
te fifties. He has a head much too big for his body, a high forehead, crinkly long b
la
ck hair streaked with gray, a square face with a pug nose, a walrus mustache, black eyes which peer near-sightedly from behind thick-lensed spectacles, tiny hands and feet. He is dressed in threadbare black clothes and his white shirt is frayed at collar and cuffs, but everything about him is fastidiously clean. Even his flowing Windsor tie is neatly tied. There is a foreign atmosphere about him, the stamp of an alien radical, a strong resemblance to the type Anarchist as portrayed, bomb in hand, in newspaper cartoons. He is asleep now, bent forward in his chair, his arms folded on the table, his head resting sideways on his arms
.

LARRY SLADE
is sixty. He is tall, raw-boned, with coarse straight white hair, worn long and raggedly cut. He has a gaunt Irish face with a big nose, high cheekbones, a lantern jaw with a week’s stubble of beard, a mystic’s meditative pale-blue eyes with a gleam of sharp sardonic humor in them. As slovenly as
HUGO
is neat, his clothes are dirty and much slept in. His gray flannel shirt, open at the neck, has the appearance of having never been washed. From the way he methodically scratches himself with his long-fingered, hairy hands, he is lousy and reconciled to being so. He is the only occupant of the room who is not asleep. He stares in front of him, an expression of tired tolerance giving his face the quality of a pitying but weary old priest’s
.

All four chairs at the middle table, front, are occupied
.
JOE MOTT
sits at left-front of the table, facing front. Behind him, facing right-front, is
PIET WETJOEN
(“
The General
”
). At center of the tab
le
, rear
, james
CAMERON
(“
Jimmy Tomorrow
”
) sits facing front. At right of table, opposite
joe,
is
CECIL LEWIS
(“
The Captain
”
)
.

JOE MOTT
is a Negro, about fifty years old, brown-skinned, stocky, wearing a light suit that had once been flashily sporty but is now about to fall apart. His pointed tan buttoned shoes, faded pink shirt and brighttie belong to the same vintage. Still, he manages to preserve an atmosphere of nattiness and there is nothing dirty about his appearance. His face is only mildly negroid in type. The nose is thin and his lips are not noticeably thick. His hair is crinkly and he is beginning to get bald. A scar from a knife slash runs from his left cheekbone to jaw. His face would be hard and tough if it were not for its good nature and lazy humor. He is asleep, his nodding head supported by his left hand
.

PIET WETJOEN,
the Boer, is in his fifties, a huge man with a bald head and a long grizzled beard. He is slovenly dressed in a dirty shapeless patched suit, spotted by food. A Dutch farmer type, his once great muscu
la
r strength has been debauched into flaccid tallow. But despite his blubbery mouth and sodden bloodshot blue eyes, there is still a suggestion of old authority lurking in him like a memory of the drowned. He is hunched forward, both elbows on the table, his hand on each side of his head for support
.

JAMES CAMERON
(“
Jimmy Tomorrow
”
) is about the same size and age
as
HUGO,
a small man. Like
hugo,
he wears threadbare black, and everything about him is clean. But the resemblance ceases there
.
JIMMY
has a face like an old well-bred, gentle bloodhound’s, with folds of flesh hanging from each side of his mouth, and big brown friendly guileless eyes, more bloodshot than any bloodhound’s ever were. He has mouse-colored thinning hair, a little bulbous nose, buck teeth in a small rabbit mouth. But his forehead is fine, his eyes are intelligent and there once was a competent ability in him. His speech is educated, with the ghost of a Scotch rhythm in it. His manners are those of a gentleman. There is a quality about him of a prim, Victorian old maid, and at the same time of a likable, affectionate boy who has never grown up. He sleeps, chin on chest, hands folded in his lap
.

CECIL LEWIS
(“
The Captain
”
) is as obviously English as Yorkshire pudding and just as obviously the former army officer. He is going on sixty. His hair and military mustache are white, his eyes bright blue, his complexion that of a turkey. His lean figure is still erect and square-shouldered. He is stripped to the waist, his coat, shirt, undershirt, collar and tie crushed up into a pillow on the table in front of him, his head sideways on this pillow, facing front, his arms dangling toward the floor. On his lower left shoulder is the big ragged scar of an old wound
.

At the table at right, front
,
HARRY HOPE,
the proprietor, sits in the middle, facing front, with
pat
MCGLOIN
on his right and
ED MOSHER
on his left, the other two chairs being unoccupied.

Both
MCGLOIN
and
MOSHER
are big paunchy men
.
MCGLOIN
has his old occupation of policeman stamped all over him. He is in his fifties, sandy-haired, bullet-headed, jowly, with protruding ears and little round eyes. His face must once have been brutal and greedy, but time and whiskey have melted it down into a good-humored, parasite’s characterlessness. He wears old clothes and is slovenly. He is slumped sideways on his chair, his head drooping jerkily toward one shoulder
.

ED MOSHER
is
going on sixty. He has a round kewpie’s face
—
a kewpie who is an unshaven habitual drunkard. He looks like an enlarged, elderly, bald edition of the vi
ll
age fat boy
—
a sly fat boy, congenitally indolent, a practical joker, a born grafter and con merchant. But amusing and essentially harmless, even in his most enterprising days, because always too lazy to carry crookedness beyond petty swindling. The influence of his old circus career is apparent in his get-up. His worn clothes are flashy; he wears phony rings anda heavy brass watch-chain (not connected to a watch)
. Likemcgloin,
he is slovenly. His head is thrown back, his big mouth open
.

HARRY HOPE
is sixty, white-haired, so thin the description
“
bag of bones
”
was made for him. He has the face of an old family horse, prone to tantrums, with balkiness always smoldering in its wall eyes, waiting for any excuse to shy and pretend to take the bit in its teeth. Hope is one of those men whom everyone likes on sight, a softhearted slob, without malice, feeling superior to no one, a sinner among sinners, a born easy mark for every appeal. He attempts to hide his defenselessness behind a testy truculent manner, but this has never fooled anyone. He is a little deaf, but not half as deaf as he sometimes pretends. His sight is failing but is not as bad as he comp
la
ins it is. He wears five-and-ten-cent-store spectacles which are so out of alignment that one eye at times peers half over one glass while the other eye looks half under the other. He has badly fitting store teeth, which click like castanets when he begins to fume. He is dressed in an old coat from one suit and pants from another
.

In a chair facing right at the tab
le
in the second line, between the first two tables, front, sits
WILLIE OBAN
,
his head on his left arm outstretched along the table edge. He is in his
la
te thirties, of average height, thin. His haggard, dissipated face has a small nose, a pointed chin, blue eyes with colorless lashes and brows. His blond hair, badly in need of a cut, clings in a limp part to his skull. His eyelids flutter continually as if any light were too strong for his eyes. The clothes he wears belong on a scarecrow. They seem constructed of an inferior grade of dirty blotting paper. His shoes are even more disreputable, wrecks of imitation leather, one
la
ced with twine, the other with a bit of wire. He has no socks, and his bare feet show through holes in the soles, with his big toes sticking out of the uppers. He keeps muttering and twitching in his sleep
.

As the curtain rises
, rocky,
the night bartender, comes from the bar through the curtain and stands looking over the back room. He is a Neapolitan-American in his
la
te twenties, squat and muscular, with a flat, swarthy face and beady eyes. The sleeves of his collarless shirt are rolled up on his thick, powerful arms and he wears a soiled apron. A tough guy but sentimental, in his way, and good-natured. He signals to
larry
with a cautious
“
Sstt
”
and motions him to see if
hope
is asleep
.
LARRY
rises from his chair to look at hope and nods to
ROCKY
. rocky
goes back in the bar but immediately returns with a bottle of bar whiskey and a glass. He squeezes between the tables to
LARRY
.

ROCKY

In a low voice out of the side of his mouth
.

Make it fast.

LARRY
pours a drink and gulps it down
.
ROCKY
takes the bottle and

puts it on the table where
WILLIE OBAN
is
.

Don’t want de Boss to get wise when he’s got one of his tightwad buns on.

He chuckles with an amused glance at
HOPE

Jees, ain’t de old bastard a riot when he starts dat bull about turnin’ over a new leaf? “Not a damned drink on de house,” he tells me, “and all dese bums got to pay up deir room rent. Beginnin’ tomorrow,” he says. Jees, yuh’d tink he meant it!
He sits down in the chair at
LARRY’s
left
.

LARRY

Grinning
.

I’ll be glad to pay up—tomorrow. And I know my fellow inmates will promise the same. They’ve all a touching credulity concerning tomorrows.

A half-drunken mockery in his eyes
.

It’ll be a great day for them, tomorrow—the Feast of All Fools, with brass bands playing! Their ships will come in, loaded to the gunwales with cancelled regrets and promises fulfilled and clean slates and new leases!

ROCKY

Cynically
.

Yeah, and a ton of hop!

LARRY

Leans toward him, a comical intensity in his low voice
.

Don’t mock the faith! Have you no respect for religion, you unregenerate Wop? What’s it matter if the truth is that their favoring breeze has the stink of nickel whiskey on its breath, and their sea is a growler of lager and ale, and their ships are long since looted and scuttled and sunk on the bottom? To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober. And that’s enough philosophic wisdom to give you for one drink of rot-gut.

ROCKY

Grins kiddingly
.

De old Foolosopher, like Hickey calls yuh, ain’t yuh? I s’pose you don’t fall for no pipe dream?

LARRY

A bit stiffly
.

I don’t, no. Mine are all dead and buried behind me. What’s before me is the comforting fact that death is a fine long sleep, and I’m damned tired, and it can’t come too soon for me.

ROCKY

Yeah, just hangin’ around hopin’ you’ll croak, ain’t yuh? Well, I’m bettin’ you’ll have a good long wait. Jees, somebody’ll have to take an axe to croak you!

LARRY

Grins
.

Yes, it’s my bad luck to be cursed with an iron constitution that even

Harry’s booze can’t corrode.