The Books: “The Mutilated” (Tennessee Williams)

Next on the script shelf:

Next Tennessee Williams play on the shelf is The Mutilated, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 7: In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Other Plays.

A one-act play published and produced originally in 1966 – it has the feel, to me, of a full-length play, though. It’s not a snippet, or a moment in time. There are 3-dimensional characters, a whole world created … it’s a dense rich play. I actually saw this done once at the Actors Studio. Nobody’s heard of it, except for Williams fans, but I definitely think it’s one of his best one-acts.

It takes place in the French Quarter in New Orleans – and the whole world he describes is like … oh, Ironweed or Bar Fly. This is a world of con artists, drunks, whores, and homeless people. But of course it is also a world of lonely people, the loneliest people in the world. People on the fringe of society. It takes place on Christmas Eve which adds to the melancholy mood. To be alone in a cockroach-ridden hotel on Christmas Eve is pretty bleak.

The two main characters are Celeste and Trinket. Celeste is a whore. She is also a shoplifter, and probably mentally challenged in some way. There’s something wrong with her, mentally. She has no impulse control. She has a large bosom – and she is very proud of her breasts. Always displaying them, stroking them, leading with them. She’s a pathetic character. Everyone in town knows she’s a drunk, knows she’s broke, knows she’s a shoplifter – so she basically can’t go anywhere. No one will serve her, she is thrown out of every place she goes into.

Trinket lives in the Silver Dollar Hotel (a cheap hotel filled with drunks and thieves). But Trinket is actually loaded. Her father has three oil wells that he left to her – and she walks around with a load of cash in her purse. She stays at the crappy hotel because she has stayed there for years, and she is very attached to her room. She kind of treats the Silver Dollar Hotel as though it is a five-star hotel. Trinket is a tormented character. She obviously has cancer – even though that word is never spoken. One of her breasts has been removed, and she is morbidly sensitive about it. (This is revealed WAY into the play … you don’t know what exactly is going on because she is too freaked out to even mention it … she just keeps talking about her “mutilation”) She no longer can have lovers, because she doesn’t want to subject them to her mutilation. But again – all of this is revealed in a very sideways manner … What we are mainly faced with is a character who sits in her room, on the edge of panic, and who constantly keeps one of her hands on her chest. She is in a lot of pain. Always.

She has kept her “mutilation” a secret. But she and Celeste had become friends – of a sort – a friendship based on loneliness. Also, Trinket would invite Celeste into her room and give her cups of wine and food. That was mainly why Celeste was interested in being friends with Trinket: for the food. Trinket confessed her mutilation to Celeste. (This all happened before the play starts) And now: the two of them have had a falling out, Trinket has locked her door against Celeste, and Celeste has gone berserk – writing grafitti all over the walls of the hotel – about Trinket’s mutilation.

So. The course of the play is one Christmas Eve … with Trinket trying to keep Celeste out of her room – and Celeste making a nuisance of herself in the hotel lobby … Christmas carollers wander the streets, and sing – showing up at the ends of each scene … Trinket goes out to her one bar that she goes to, sits by herself, and orders her absinthe frappe. Two soldeirs from the Navy enter the bar looking for someone. Trinket is completely struck by the appearance of one of them – he seems like an angel to her. Trinket ends up taking him home with her – even though she is “mutilated”.

I’m going to excerpt from the scene between Trinket and Slim, the sailor – once they are alone in her room. You can see that Trinket just wants love … not sex. She wants a connection. But Slim … obviously Slim has other ideas. Trinket is also putting off the sex – because she doesn’t want him to know she is mutilated. That’s one of the reasons she talks so much.

I love this play. I’d love to play either Trinket or Celeste – two great characters.

From The Mutilated, included in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 7: In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Other Plays. by Tennessee Williams

[Trinket’s bedroom is lighted, as she comes up the outside stairs with Slim, who is leaning heavily on her]

TRINKET. Well, here we are. Did you think we’d ever make it?

SLIM. Yeh, I thought we’d make it.

TRINKET. I wasn’t so sure. I mean that we’d make it together. But here we are, together. This is my — little home …

SLIM. Not much to it.

TRINKET. No, there’s not much to it, but it’s — familiar, it’s — home. I lived here before my father’s good luck in the oilfields and I became so attached to this room that I stay on and on. You know, you can love a room you live in like a person you live with, if you live with a person. I don’t. I live alone here. I have the advantage of a private, outside entrance, and that’s an important advantage, especially if I, when you — have a guest with you at night. I don’t, you, uh, don’t — always want to have to go through the hotel lobby which I’d have to do at any big hotel with —

SLIM. — With house dicks in it?

TRINKET. With anyone, everyone in it.

SLIM. [suspiciously] Hmmmm.

TRINKET. You’re so tall you make the ceiling seem low. Take off your coat and sit down.

SLIM. Not till I make up my mind if I want to stay here or not.

TRINKET. [nervously] Oh.

SLIM. “Oh.” I can take care of myself in this situation or any Goddam situation that that wop Bruno’s ever gotten me into. Las’ week-en’ he innerduced me to a rich ole freak that had a two-story apartmenet at the Crescent Hotel. I looked around and I was alone with this freak. I said to the freak, “Something’s not natural here,” an’ the freak said to me, “I’m your slave! I’m your slaaaa-ve!” — I said, “OK, slave, show me the color of your money!”

TRINKET. [sadly] Oh.

SLIM. What do you mean by “oh”.

TRINKET. I just mean oh.

SLIM. [broodingly] Oh. Then that rich freak says, “Master, I am your slave. My money is green as lettuce and good as gold.” I said, “Slave, forget the description, lemme see it — Show me the color of your money!”

TRINKET. — Are you speaking to me, or –?

SLIM. I’m telling you something that happened las’ week-en’ which cost me home leave for Christmas. This character, this freak, fell down on her knees an’ said, “You hit me, oh, boo, hoo, you hit me.” I hadn’t touched this freak. But then I got the idea. The freak wanted me to hit her. “OK, slave, get up.” The freak got up and I shoved her into a gold frame mirror so hard it cracked the glass. “Now, slave, I don’t wanna hear a description of you rmoney, I wanna see it.” — What’re you messing aroun’ with over there?

TRINKET. Me?

SLIM. You.

TRINKET. I’m boiling some water to make you some instant coffee. [She comes from behind an ornamental screen or hanging]

SLIM. Are you having a heart attack?

TRINKET. Oh, no! Why? Why?

SLIM. You keep a hand over your chest. [He reaches out to pull her hand away. She gasps and retreats.]

TRINKET. No, no, no, no, no! [In panic, to divert him, she snatches a photograph from the dresser] Look at this! Would you recognize me? In this newspaper photo I am standing between the Mayor and the president of the International Trade Mart. Then, at that time, I was in the field of public relations, I was called the Texas Tornado. I planned and organized the funeral of Mr. Depression, yes, I had the idea of burying Mr. Depression, holding an exact imitation of a funeral for him. All civic leaders backed me. There was a parade, I mean a funeral procession — no, no, no, no, no! [He has stretched his hand out again to remove her hand from her chest] For, for Mr. Depression! [It should be apparent that this was the climax of her life]

SLIM. There’s something not natural here.

TRINKET. Oh? No! — Mr. Depression was carried along Canal Street and up Saint Charles with big paper lilies on his twelve-foot coffin and there was a band playing a funeral march and I led the band, I walked in front of it dressed like a widow sobbing in a black veil. [He reaches again for her hand still clasped in panic to her chest.] No, no, no, no, no! — It went, the procession went, all the way to Audobon Park: and then can you guess what happened? [Slim, weaving, pays no attention to this] — It rained like rain had never fallen before upon the earth! Cats, dogs, crocodiles — ZEBRAS! The procession broke up, band quit, everything dissolved, dispersed in the cloudburst! — Kettle’s whistling … [She rushes back of the screen or hanging]

SLIM. Morbid!

TRINKET. [rushing back out] Here, but let it cool first before you — [He takes the cup and empties it onto the floor] — Oh, you spilt it, I’ll — [She rushes back of the screen and back out with a towel, mops up the spilt coffee] — Now I’m no longer in public relations at all, it seems like another life in another world to me. It’s hard to imagine the energy, confidence, drive I had when I first hit this town. Personalities go through such radical changes when something happens to change the course of their lives. Don’t they? Haven’t you noticed? [There is a pause between them. Celeste appears before the hotel. She has two pursues: Trinket’s and hers. She stands at the foot of the outside stairs to Trinket’s room and stamps her foot twice]

SLIM. There’s somethin’ Goddam wrong ehre, peculiar, not natural, morbid.

TRINKET. — I don’t know what it could be except that you won’t sit down and you won’t take coffee. — Is it somethinga bout me? I’m a simple, ordinary person, and you’re my guest and I’m your friend, not your slave. I’ve always maintained that this city is hard on the unformed characters of young people that come here, especially if they, oh, now, please sit down! Do! I’d be so happy!

SLIM. I don’t sit down and stay down in any morbid place till I know if I want to stay in it. Be my slave. And show me the lettuce color of your money. — Good as — gold … [Celeste remains at the foot of the stairs. She stamps her foot twice more]

TRINKET. [in a shamed voice] It’s green as lettuce and it’s — good as my father’s continual gusher in Texas … [Celeste stamps her feet twice more and tosses Trinket’s purse onto the sidewalk. She stamps on the purse]

CELESTE. [in a strange changing voice, separating each syllable]
Sa-rah Bern-hardt had one leg.
The oth-er was a wood-en peg
But good she did, yep, she did good,
Clump-ing on a STUMP OF WOOD.

[She throws back her head and laughs at the sky]

TRINKET. It’s a pity so many people choose the night of Our Savior’s birth to behave in such a — [Celeste kicks Trinket’s purse into the orchestra pit as a policeman comes on]

POLICEMAN. Move along.

CELESTE. That’s just what I’m doing. [She goes off one way, the policeman the other]

SLIM. What’ve you got to drink here?

TRINKET. You don’t want more to drink, Slim.

SLIM. Don’ argue with me or I’ll throw you across a room an’—

TRINKET. Oh, Slim, you don’t mean that. You only say that because I’m afraid your friend has led you into the wrong kind of company, Slim. Oh, your hair is red gold, red gold, your skin is like — sunlight on snow …

SLIM. Liquor! Out with it! Quick, before I —

TRINKET. I have nothing but wine here.

SLIM. Produce it, out with it, quick, before I — break you a — mirror!

TRINKET. No one can frighten me, Slim, but — [She pours a glass of wine from her crystal decanter] — here!

SLIM. You take a drink of it, first, I’m takin’ no chances.

TRINKET. Why, thank you, I will. I can use it. [She sips the wine, then offers the glass to him]

SLIM. Pour me a clean other glass. I don’t wanna drink outa yours an’ catch somethin’ morbid.

TRINKET. You mustn’t talk like that to me, even though you don’t mean it. Do you know how long it’s been since a man has been in this room? Several years. And it seemed like a lifetime — a death time. [Celeste marches into sight again, stops at the foot of the stairs, and stamps her foot twice as if about to commence the formal parade of a palace guard]

SLIM. [falling onto the bed] I’m paralyzed here in a morbid — situation …

[Celeste opens her huge purse and removes a key: then she mounts the stairs, saying “Clump!” with each step. Trinket gasps and rushes to bolt the outside door. Celeste tries the door with her key: no luck: then she throws back her head like a dog yowling at the moon and she cries out–]

CELESTE. Agnes — JOOOOOO — OOOOOnes!

TRINKET. Yes, it’s the whore that snatched my purse on the street! [She gasps and turns out the light as if that would protect her from Celeste’s maniacal steps]

CELESTE. You’ll find your empty purse outside in the gutter where I kicked it, you FINK! It’s got your rosary in it an’ your father’s picture standin’ next to his GUSHER! You better come out an’ get it before the trashman sweeps it into a sewer!

TRINKET. Celeste, go back to the House of Detention and ask for medical help there. You are out of your mind, howling like a mad dog on my stairs.

CELESTE. You told Bernie and Katz I’d been to jail, you fink.

TRINKET. You scratched a hideous lie on the stairs about me!

CELESTE. I scratched the truth about you! You got two mutilations, not one! The worse mutilation you’ve got is a crime of the Christian commandments, STINGINESS, CHEAPNESS, PURSE PRIDE! Your rosary’s in the gutter with your GUSHER! Goddam, you got me thrown out, out, out! [She stamps her foot with each “out”] And everything that I owned is locked up in a basement!

TRINKET. You know what you did, I don’t have to remind you, and now go back down the stairs before I — I have the phone in my hand! [She has picked up the telephone]

CELESTE. FINK! MUTILATED FINK!

TRINKET. [into the telephone] BERNIE! [Celeste runs down the stairs. At the bottom, she stops and looks up sobbing at the sky, weeping like a lost child. There is a pause, a silence. Celeste approaches the orchestra pit, stoops, her hand extended. The purse is handed back to her from below. She returns sobbing to the bottom of the outside staircase; she removes the rosary from Trinket’s purse and begins to “tell her beads,” sobbing] I believe she —

SLIM. — I’d a-been home for Christmas an’ not broke Mom’s heart if I hadn’ gone AWOL las’ week-en’ but ‘stead of home I’m paralyzed here in a morbid situation with a morbid hooker an’ Goddam Bruno’s gone where?

TRINKET. [at the telephone] Bernie? Trinket! [Bernie is lighted dimly at the switchboard in the lobby] — Be a doll, Bernie, and fetch me two hamburgers from the White Castle and a big carton of black coffee, and hurry back with it. This is a five-dollar tip night for you, Bernie. [Celeste stands shivering in a blue spotlight at the foot of the outside stairs]

CELESTE. Anyhow, I’m not mutilated. She is. [Bernie walks past her to the White Castle] Bernie! — Sweetheart? [He ignores her as he goes. Slim falls back onto the bed. Trinknet unties his shoes]

SLIM. [falling asleep] Morbid, unnatural — slave …..

TRINKET. Oh, please stay awake with me!

SLIM. Ah-gah-way … [He rolls away from her and begins to snore]

TRINKET. — Well, anyhow, I have somebody here with me. Celeste’s alone but I’m not, I’m not alone and she is.

CELESTE. [sinking onto the bottom step of the outside stairs] No, I’m not mutilated. She is. [Trinket switches on the radio: it’s soundless]

TRINKET. — The candlelight service is over. — The Holy Infant has been born in the manger. Now He’s under the starry blue robe of His Mother. His blind, sweet hands are fumbling to find her breast. Now He’s found it. His sweet, hungry lips are at her rose-petal nipple. — Oh, such wanting things lips are, and such giving things, breasts! [The carollers have quietly assembled before the hotel. As the bedroom scene dims out, they begin to sing.]

CAROLLERS.
I think for some uncertain reason
Mercy will be shown this season
To the wayward and deformed,
To the loney and misfit
A miracle! A miracle!

The homeless will be housed and warmed.

SINGLE CAROLLER. [stepping out of the group]
I think they will be housed and warmed
And fed and comforted a while
And still not yet, not for a while
The guileful word, the practiced smile.

CAROLLERS.
A miracle! A miracle!
The dark held back a little while.

[They disperse]