The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays by Tennessee Williams Page A

: Those delusions of fear that you have about your husband, Lady Shontine . . .
    LADY SHONTINE : I have no delusions. My mind is perfectly clear.
    VASHYA : Tell him about the men you see in our bedroom at night.
    LADY SHONTINE : Yes. Many men. Soldiers. They come troopinginto the room and they stand in a circle around the bed. They speak to him in low voices, say terrible things. I can’t stand it much longer.
    VASHYA : You see, Doctor?
    DR. FRELICH : Yes. Hallucinations, visual and auditory.
    LADY SHONTINE : No, Doctor, not hallucinations but real men! —Only all of them are dead . . .
    DR. FRELICH : Death is our chief preoccupation these days. We live with it so constantly that it naturally tends to become either a matter of complete indifference to us or else—an obsession! We can’t turn a street-corner without coming face to face with it! It’s no wonder! We go to bed at night and wake up in the morning with the rumbling of guns in our ears! A man like you, Sir Vashya, a man with iron nerves, can’t realize what it is to be obsessed with the fear of death as so many of us are these days . . . Excuse me, Lady Shontine, you were telling me about the men that come into your bedroom at night.
    LADY SHONTINE [
a slight pause
]: They come into the room and stand around the bed and they ask for HIM. They want HIM to go WITH them back to where they came from. They say it’s time for HIM to go WITH them. He SENT them there. He’s their LEADER they say, and they want him to go back there with them.
    DR. FRELICH : Back where, Lady Shontine?
    LADY SHONTINE : To the front. The places where they were killed. But he won’t go. He’s AFRAID to go, Doctor. But I know that he ought to go. He belongs with them. And someday they’ll INSIST on his going. They won’t take “no” for an answer, and then he’ll have to go with them.
    VASHYA : You see?
    DR. FRELICH : These men, Lady Shontine, do you recognize any of their faces?
    LADY SHONTINE : Some of them—yes , some of them. My two brothers. One of them was only seventeen, a dear boy with very soft blue eyes. I can’t see them anymore. He keeps them closed when hecomes into my room at night. I think he doesn’t want to see me in bed with this man. And then there is my father and many other men I danced with when I was a very young girl. —And there is one other. A young man who was very nice to me last winter when I was feeling so badly. He had a quiet, pleasant voice that made me feel calm inside. But there was something wrong with his legs, one of them shorter than the other, and for that reason he wasn’t enlisted. I was glad of that because he didn’t seem made for the war. He hated all of it so. He—he read some of his poems which I liked very much. But some kind of a mistake occurred and in spite of his affliction, Doctor, he was drafted into the army and sent to the front and later I learned that he had been blown into little pieces. . . His name was David. And now at night he comes into my bedroom and he doesn’t look at me, he looks at my husband, and he says, “Vashya Shontine, it is time for you to go back with me to the front!”
    VASHYA : You see, Doctor? You see?
    DR. FRELICH : Yes. I think I see.
    VASHYA : How vividly she imagines these things—you see?
    DR. FRELICH : I think it would be a good idea if Lady Shontine would come to my office tomorrow morning where we can discuss things more thoroughly. You see these psychoses, Sir Vashya, require a very careful and extensive probing . . .
    VASHYA [
quickly
]: That’s impossible. You’ll have to talk to her here. In my house. You see, in her present condition I can’t very well allow her to leave.
    LADY SHONTINE : No, he won’t let me go out! I am his prisoner here! He knows that I know too much. He’s afraid that I will tell. No, Vashya. I won’t tell a thing. It is only the men, the soldiers, that can harm you now!
    DR. FRELICH : Lady Shontine, nobody can harm your husband.
    VASHYA :