Death of a Salesman Page 5

  BIFF: Oh, Pop!

  WILLY: It’s got Gene Tunney’s signature on it!

  [HAPPY runs onstage with a punching bag.]

  BIFF: Gee, how’d you know we wanted a punching bag?

  WILLY: Well, it’s the finest thing for the timing.

  HAPPY [lies down on his back and pedals with his feet]: I’m losing weight, you notice, Pop?

  WILLY [to HAPPY]: Jumping rope is good too.

  BIFF: Did you see the new football I got?

  WILLY [examining the ball]: Where’d you get a new ball?

  BIFF: The coach told me to practice my passing.

  WILLY: That so? And he gave you the ball, heh?

  BIFF: Well, I borrowed it from the locker room. [He laughs confidentially.]

  WILLY [laughing with him at the theft]: I want you to return that.

  HAPPY: I told you he wouldn’t like it!

  BIFF [angrily]: Well, I’m bringing it back!

  WILLY [stopping the incipient argument, to HAPPY]: Sure, he’s gotta practice with a regulation ball, doesn’t he? [To BIFF] Coach’ll probably congratulate you on your initiative!

  BIFF: Oh, he keeps congratulating my initiative all the time, Pop.

  WILLY: That’s because he likes you. If somebody else took that ball there’d be an uproar. So what’s the report, boys, what’s the report?

  BIFF: Where’d you go this time, Dad? Gee, we were lonesome for you.

  WILLY [ pleased, puts an arm around each boy and they come down to the apron]: Lonesome, heh?

  BIFF: Missed you every minute.

  WILLY: Don’t say? Tell you a secret, boys. Don’t breathe it to a soul. Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home any more.

  HAPPY: Like Uncle Charley, heh?

  WILLY: Bigger than Uncle Charley! Because Charley is not—liked. He’s liked, but he’s not—well liked.

  BIFF: Where’d you go this time, Dad?

  WILLY: Well, I got on the road, and I went north to Providence. Met the Mayor.

  BIFF: The Mayor of Providence!

  WILLY: He was sitting in the hotel lobby.

  BIFF: What’d he say?

  WILLY: He said, “Morning!” And I said, “You got a fine city here, Mayor.” And then he had coffee with me. And then I went to Waterbury. Waterbury is a fine city. Big clock city, the famous Waterbury clock. Sold a nice bill there. And then Boston—Boston is the cradle of the Revolution. A fine city. And a couple of other towns in Mass., and on to Portland and Bangor and straight home!

  BIFF: Gee, I’d love to go with you sometime, Dad.

  WILLY: Soon as summer comes.

  HAPPY: Promise?

  WILLY: You and Hap and I, and I’ll show you all the towns. America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people. And when I bring you fellas up, there’ll be open sesame for all of us, ’cause one thing, boys: I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own. This summer, heh?

  BIFF and HAPPY [together]: Yeah! You bet!

  WILLY: We’ll take our bathing suits.

  HAPPY: We’ll carry your bags, Pop!

  WILLY: Oh, won’t that be something! Me comin’ into the Boston stores with you boys carryin’ my bags. What a sensation!

  [BIFF is prancing around, practicing passing the ball.]

  WILLY: You nervous, Biff, about the game?

  BIFF: Not if you’re gonna be there.

  WILLY: What do they say about you in school, now that they made you captain?

  HAPPY: There’s a crowd of girls behind him every time the classes change.

  BIFF [taking WILLY’S hand]: This Saturday, Pop, this Saturday—just for you, I’m going to break through for a touchdown.

  HAPPY: You’re supposed to pass.

  BIFF: I’m takin’ one play for Pop. You watch me, Pop, and when I take off my helmet, that means I’m breakin’ out. Then you watch me crash through that line!

  WILLY [kisses BIFF]: Oh, wait’ll I tell this in Boston!

  [BERNARD enters in knickers. He is younger than BIFF, earnest and loyal, a worried boy.]

  BERNARD: Biff, where are you? You’re supposed to study with me today.

  WILLY: Hey, looka Bernard. What’re you lookin’ so anemic about, Bernard?

  BERNARD: He’s gotta study, Uncle Willy. He’s got Regents next week.

  HAPPY [tauntingly, spinning BERNARD around]: Let’s box, Bernard!

  BERNARD: Biff ! [He gets away from HAPPY.] Listen, Biff, I heard Mr. Birnbaum say that if you don’t start studyin’ math he’s gonna flunk you, and you won’t graduate. I heard him!

  WILLY: You better study with him, Biff. Go ahead now.

  BERNARD: I heard him!

  BIFF: Oh, Pop, you didn’t see my sneakers! [He holds up a foot for WILLY to look at.]

  WILLY: Hey, that’s a beautiful job of printing!

  BERNARD [wiping his glasses]: Just because he printed University of Virginia on his sneakers doesn’t mean they’ve got to graduate him, Uncle Willy!

  WILLY [angrily]: What’re you talking about? With scholarships to three universities they’re gonna flunk him?

  BERNARD: But I heard Mr. Birnbaum say—

  WILLY: Don’t be a pest, Bernard! [To his boys] What an anemic!

  BERNARD: Okay, I’m waiting for you in my house, Biff.

  [BERNARD goes off. The LOMANS laugh.]

  WILLY: Bernard is not well liked, is he?

  BIFF: He’s liked, but he’s not well liked.

  HAPPY: That’s right, Pop.

  WILLY: That’s just what I mean, Bernard can get the best marks in school, y’understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y’understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him. That’s why I thank Almighty God you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. You take me, for instance. I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. “Willy Loman is here!” That’s all they have to know, and I go right through.

  BIFF: Did you knock them dead, Pop?

  WILLY: Knocked ’em cold in Providence, slaughtered ’em in Boston.

  HAPPY [on his back, pedaling again]: I’m losing weight, you notice, Pop?

  [LINDA enters, as of old, a ribbon in her hair, carrying a basket of washing.]

  LINDA [with youthful energy]: Hello, dear!

  WILLY: Sweetheart!

  LINDA: How’d the Chevvy run?

  WILLY: Chevrolet, Linda, is the greatest car ever built. [To the boys] Since when do you let your mother carry wash up the stairs?

  BIFF: Grab hold there, boy!

  HAPPY: Where to, Mom?

  LINDA: Hang them up on the line. And you better go down to your friends, Biff. The cellar is full of boys. They don’t know what to do with themselves.

  BIFF: Ah, when Pop comes home they can wait!

  WILLY [laughs appreciatively]: You better go down and tell them what to do, Biff.

  BIFF: I think I’ll have them sweep out the furnace room.

  WILLY: Good work, Biff.

  BIFF [goes through wall-line of kitchen to doorway at back and calls down]: Fellas! Everybody sweep out the furnace room! I’ll be right down!

  VOICES: All right! Okay, Biff.

  BIFF: George and Sam and Frank, come out back! We’re hangin’ up the wash! Come on, Hap, on the double! [He and HAPPY carry out the basket.]

  LINDA: The way they obey him!

  WILLY: Well, that’s training, the training. I’m tellin’ you, I was sellin’ thousands and thousands, but I had to come home.

  LINDA: Oh, the whole block’ll be at that game. Did you sell anything?

  WILLY: I did five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston.

  LINDA: No! Wait a minute, I’ve got a pencil. [She pulls pencil and paper out of her apron pocket
.] That makes your commission . . . Two hundred—my God! Two hundred and twelve dollars!

  WILLY: Well, I didn’t figure it yet, but . . .

  LINDA: How much did you do?

  WILLY: Well, I—I did—about a hundred and eighty gross in Providence. Well, no—it came to—roughly two hundred gross on the whole trip.

  LINDA [without hesitation]: Two hundred gross. That’s . . . [She figures.]

  WILLY: The trouble was that three of the stores were half closed for inventory in Boston. Otherwise I woulda broke records.

  LINDA: Well, it makes seventy dollars and some pennies. That’s very good.

  WILLY: What do we owe?

  LINDA: Well, on the first there’s sixteen dollars on the refrigerator—

  WILLY: Why sixteen?

  LINDA: Well, the fan belt broke, so it was a dollar eighty.

  WILLY: But it’s brand new.

  LINDA: Well, the man said that’s the way it is. Till they work themselves in, y’know.

  [They move through the wall-line into the kitchen.]

  WILLY: I hope we didn’t get stuck on that machine.

  LINDA: They got the biggest ads of any of them!

  WILLY: I know, it’s a fine machine. What else?

  LINDA: Well, there’s nine-sixty for the washing machine. And for the vacuum cleaner there’s three and a half due on the fifteenth. Then the roof, you got twenty-one dollars remaining.

  WILLY: It don’t leak, does it?

  LINDA: No, they did a wonderful job. Then you owe Frank for the carburetor.

  WILLY: I’m not going to pay that man! That goddam Chevrolet, they ought to prohibit the manufacture of that car!

  LINDA: Well, you owe him three and a half. And odds and ends, comes to around a hundred and twenty dollars by the fifteenth.

  WILLY: A hundred and twenty dollars! My God, if business don’t pick up I don’t know what I’m gonna do!

  LINDA: Well, next week you’ll do better.

  WILLY: Oh, I’ll knock ’em dead next week. I’ll go to Hartford. I’m very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don’t seem to take to me.

  [They move onto the forestage.]

  LINDA: Oh, don’t be foolish.

  WILLY: I know it when I walk in. They seem to laugh at me.

  LINDA: Why? Why would they laugh at you? Don’t talk that way, Willy.

  [WILLY moves to the edge of the stage. LINDA goes into the kitchen and starts to darn stockings.]

  WILLY: I don’t know the reason for it, but they just pass me by. I’m not noticed.

  LINDA: But you’re doing wonderful, dear. You’re making seventy to a hundred dollars a week.

  WILLY: But I gotta be at it ten, twelve hours a day. Other men—I don’t know—they do it easier. I don’t know why —I can’t stop myself—I talk too much. A man oughta come in with a few words. One thing about Charley. He’s a man of few words, and they respect him.

  LINDA: You don’t talk too much, you’re just lively.

  WILLY [smiling]: Well, I figure, what the hell, life is short, a couple of jokes. [To himself ] I joke too much! [The smile goes.]

  LINDA: Why? You’re—

  WILLY: I’m fat. I’m very—foolish to look at, Linda. I didn’t tell you, but Christmas time I happened to be calling on F. H. Stewarts, and a salesman I know, as I was going in to see the buyer I heard him say something about—walrus. And I—I cracked him right across the face. I won’t take that. I simply will not take that. But they do laugh at me. I know that.

  LINDA: Darling . . .

  WILLY: I gotta overcome it. I know I gotta overcome it. I’m not dressing to advantage, maybe.

  LINDA: Willy, darling, you’re the handsomest man in the world—

  WILLY: Oh, no, Linda.

  LINDA: To me you are. [Slight pause.] The handsomest.

  [From the darkness is heard the laughter of a woman. WILLY doesn’t turn to it, but it continues through LINDA’S lines.]

  LINDA: And the boys, Willy. Few men are idolized by their children the way you are.

  [Music is heard as behind a scrim, to the left of the house,

  THE WOMAN, dimly seen, is dressing.]

  WILLY [with great feeling]: You’re the best there is, Linda, you’re a pal, you know that? On the road—on the road I want to grab you sometimes and just kiss the life outa you.

  [The laughter is loud now, and he moves into a brightening area at the left, where THE WOMAN has come from behind the scrim and is standing, putting on her hat, looking into a “mirror,” and laughing.]

  WILLY: ’Cause I get so lonely—especially when business is bad and there’s nobody to talk to. I get the feeling that I’ll never sell anything again, that I won’t make a living for you, or a business, a business for the boys. [He talks through THE WOMAN’S subsiding laughter; THE WOMAN primps at the “mirror.”] There’s so much I want to make for—

  THE WOMAN: Me? You didn’t make me, Willy. I picked you.

  WILLY [pleased]: You picked me?

  THE WOMAN [who is quite proper-looking, Willy’s age]: I did. I’ve been sitting at that desk watching all the salesmen go by, day in, day out. But you’ve got such a sense of humor, and we do have such a good time together, don’t we?

  WILLY: Sure, sure. [He takes her in his arms.] Why do you have to go now?

  THE WOMAN: It’s two o’clock . . .

  WILLY: No, come on in! [He pulls her.]

  THE WOMAN: . . . my sisters’ll be scandalized. When’ll you be back?

  WILLY: Oh, two weeks about. Will you come up again?

  THE WOMAN: Sure thing. You do make me laugh. It’s good for me. [She squeezes his arm, kisses him.] And I think you’re a wonderful man.

  WILLY: You picked me, heh?

  THE WOMAN: Sure. Because you’re so sweet. And such a kidder.

  WILLY: Well, I’ll see you next time I’m in Boston.

  THE WOMAN: I’ll put you right through to the buyers.

  WILLY [slapping her bottom]: Right. Well, bottoms up!

  THE WOMAN [slaps him gently and laughs]: You just kill me, Willy. [He suddenly grabs her and kisses her roughly.] You kill me. And thanks for the stockings. I love a lot of stockings. Well, good night.

  WILLY: Good night. And keep your pores open!

  THE WOMAN: Oh, Willy!

  [THE WOMAN bursts out laughing, and LINDA’S laughter blends in. THE WOMAN disappears into the dark. Now the area at the kitchen table brightens. LINDA is sitting where she was at the kitchen table, but now is mending a pair of her silk stockings.]

  LINDA: You are, Willy. The handsomest man. You’ve got no reason to feel that—

  WILLY [coming out of THE WOMAN’S dimming area and going over to LINDA]: I’ll make it all up to you, Linda, I’ll—

  LINDA: There’s nothing to make up, dear. You’re doing fine, better than—

  WILLY [noticing her mending]: What’s that?

  LINDA: Just mending my stockings. They’re so expensive—

  WILLY [angrily, taking them from her]: I won’t have you mending stockings in this house! Now throw them out!

  [LINDA puts the stockings in her pocket.]

  BERNARD [entering on the run]: Where is he? If he doesn’t study!

  WILLY [moving to the forestage, with great agitation]: You’ll give him the answers!

  BERNARD: I do, but I can’t on a Regents! That’s a state exam! They’re liable to arrest me!

  WILLY: Where is he? I’ll whip him, I’ll whip him!

  LINDA: And he’d better give back that football, Willy, it’s not nice.

  WILLY: Biff! Where is he? Why is he taking everything?

  LINDA: He’s too rough with the girls, Willy. All the mothers are afraid of him!

  WILLY: I’ll whip him!

  BERNARD: He’s driving the car without a license!

  [THE WOMAN’S laugh is heard.]

  WILLY: Shut up!

  LINDA: All the mothers—

  WILLY: Shut up!

  BERNARD [b
acking quietly away and out]: Mr. Birnbaum says he’s stuck up.

  WILLY: Get outa here!

  BERNARD: If he doesn’t buckle down he’ll flunk math! [He goes off.]

  LINDA: He’s right, Willy, you’ve gotta—

  WILLY [exploding at her]: There’s nothing the matter with him! You want him to be a worm like Bernard? He’s got spirit, personality . . .

  [As he speaks, LINDA, almost in tears, exits into the living-room. WILLY is alone in the kitchen, wilting and staring. The leaves are gone. It is night again, and the apartment houses look down from behind.]

  WILLY: Loaded with it. Loaded! What is he stealing? He’s giving it back, isn’t he? Why is he stealing? What did I tell him? I never in my life told him anything but decent things.

  [HAPPY in pajamas has come down the stairs; WILLY suddenly becomes aware of HAPPY’S presence.]

  HAPPY: Let’s go now, come on.

  WILLY [sitting down at the kitchen table]: Huh! Why did she have to wax the floors herself? Everytime she waxes the floors she keels over. She knows that!

  HAPPY: Shh! Take it easy. What brought you back tonight?

  WILLY: I got an awful scare. Nearly hit a kid in Yonkers. God! Why didn’t I go to Alaska with my brother Ben that time! Ben! That man was a genius, that man was success incarnate! What a mistake! He begged me to go.

  HAPPY: Well, there’s no use in—

  WILLY: You guys! There was a man started with the clothes on his back and ended up with diamond mines?

  HAPPY: Boy, someday I’d like to know how he did it.

  WILLY: What’s the mystery? The man knew what he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle, and comes out, the age of twenty-one, and he’s rich! The world is an oyster, but you don’t crack it open on a mattress!

  HAPPY: Pop, I told you I’m gonna retire you for life.

  WILLY: You’ll retire me for life on seventy goddam dollars a week? And your women and your car and your apartment, and you’ll retire me for life! Christ’s sake, I couldn’t get past Yonkers today! Where are you guys, where are you? The woods are burning! I can’t drive a car!

  [CHARLEY has appeared in the doorway. He is a large man, slow of speech, laconic, immovable. In all he says, despite what he says, there is pity, and, now, trepidation. He has a robe over pajamas, slippers on his feet. He enters the kitchen.]