# Inner voice (Внутренний голос)

Людмила Николаевна Ансельм

A woman suffering from loneliness comes to the doctor psychiatrist...

INNER VOICE


Ludmila Anselm


CAST:

Doctor-psychiatrist.

Anna - patient, single woman.

PLACE: Psychiatrist"s office.


Scene

═Anna cautiously peeps in the doctor's office


ANNA: May I come in, doctor?

DOCTOR: Come on in, please.

ANNA: How do you do!


Anna comes into the psychiatrist's office, looks around searching for a chair to put her purse on.

DOCTOR: How do you do! Put your purse on this chair and take This chair closer to me, over here. What troubles you?


ANNA: Frankly speaking, doctor, for a while I have not been able to go out in the street.


DOCTOR: It's a very rare case in my practice. As usual, I have patients with agoraphobia, fear of the closed space, and you...


ANNA: And I "vice-versa". Please, help me.


DOCTO R: Are you living alone?


ANNA: Yes, since I divorced my husband. Doctor, I feel so lonely. You can hardly imagine how hard it is to be lonely.


DOCTOR: Why can't I? Many of my patients are lonely people.


ANNA: It's quite different. My loneliness is special. Well, how to make it easier for you to understand? I'm like the Statue of Liberty: I'm standing alone, and life is boiling around me: people fall in love, go to theatres, restaurants, and I have nobody to go out with. Do you understand? Nobody to go with anywhere. And because no one needs me, I feel desperate and scared to death. I've changed so much that I can't recognize myself and feel that I'm ready for actions that can end badly for me.


DOCTOR: What do you mean? Tell me.


ANNA: I've never before been jealous, but now that I see a couple, a man and a woman, walking along the street, holding hands and showing how good they feel together, I follow them and get very jealous; and, at the same time, I hate them, and I don't know what to do in order not to see them. I stopped visiting the Zoo; I don't want to see almost all animals, even the most thorough predators, sharing a cage together. Especially on holidays and Sundays I literally climb up the wall. I go to movie or theatre, but it makes me so sick that I leave it without waiting for the end. When I get up, I immediately remember how lonely I am, and all my thoughts are oriented in one direction... All the time I've been thinking how to find somebody, and sometimes I can behave unexpectedly, unpredictably.


DOCTOR: For example?


ANNA: For example, when I go out into the street, I can stick to the first man I meet. I come up to him, start a conversation and talk on and on... I don't want anything from this passer-by, I just need to talk to somebody at the moment, to hear human speech in order not to go mad. I ask questions about everything that comes to my mind.


DOCTOR: Do they respond?


ANNA: Yes, they do, and we go along together for a while, then we part...


DOCTOR: And then you part.... Your behavior can be interpreted in the wrong way.


ANNA: And they interpret... in the wrong way. It happens in different ways.


DOCTOR: I must warn you: this kind of behavior may be dangerous for you.


ANNA: Exactly, but sitting in an empty house is so unbearable that I can't control myself. Once I was so scared when a passer-by who I was going along with and peacefully talking grabbed my hand amidst the talk, clasped it to his chest and begged: "Come with me, darling!" I could hardly escape from him. On the way home my inner voice used foul language:" You're a fool, coward. Why didn't you go with him? And if it was your chance? And from now on you'll always be alone. Serves you right." I ran away because the man looked odd. He was holding my hand, but his eyes were roaming, looking aside. I wondered whether he was a maniac.


DOCTOR: I don't understand. You're telling me that you walk in the streets, and, at the same time, you insist that you can't leave the house. Let's get closer to your problem.


ANNA: That's exactly what I'm doing. So, after the divorce with my husband, I moved into a new house, looked around. As it turned out, a lonely man was living just across from my house, and I focused my attention on him. His house is easily seen through my window; and I knew when he left the house for work, when he came back, what he used to do on Sundays. I noticed that he used to be always alone, with the exception of his dog. I questioned the neighbors about him. They told me that he had been married. At first they lived very well, appeared everywhere and always together, walked hand-in-hand, mowed the meadow grass together... But then the neighbors heard screams from their house; the wife rushed out of the house into the yard, and smoked and smoked nervously... Once a neighbor saw him rush out after her, grab the cigarette from her, throw it on the ground and crush it with his heel.


DOCTOR: Crush? Whom?


ANNA: The cigarette. Doctor, you're not paying attention. Be patient, I'm coming to my point. The wife started leaving the house in the car at nights. He stayed at home alone, didn't switch on lights; only the blue light of the TV was seen through the window. Once the wife carried out a pile of suitcases and left for good; nobody's seen her ever since. Soon after they got divorced... So, I settled down in my new house and started watching the neighbor on the opposite side... I even have made up his biography.


DOCTOR: I don't need his biography, get to the point.


ANNA: I'm just getting to it. I sometimes had walks in front of his house in order to attract his attention, but he didn't respond. Finally, I decided to invite him to my place for a cup of tea. I shoved of invitation under his door, and sat waiting for him. I wondered whether he would come or not. Can you imagine the state of my mind?


DOCTOR: Yes, I can. Did he come?


ANNA: Yes, he came, spick and span: a bow tie, a sport jacket, flannel pants... Tall, handsome -- I could hardly stand on my feet. He greeted me at the threshold. He told me that his name is Joe. I was so excited that couldn't even say to him: "Joe come in, be seated". The words stuck in my throat. He noticed this, came into the sitting room, sat on the sofa next to me, and started talking. First he spoke about the weather, then passed over to his dog. Said how smart it is, so-and-so. I see this stupid dog through my window almost every day when he walks it. Then little by little Joe told me about his travels, how many countries he had been to, what he had seen there. Do you know what impressed me greatly in his stories?


DOCTOR(bored): Go on, go on...


ANNA: Doctor, I can see that you're not interested in what I'm telling you.


DOCTOR: Why? It's interesting.


ANNA: Why do you interrupt me? I want to emphasize that all I'm telling you is very important.


DOCTOR: What made the greatest impression on you?


ANNA: The most amazing thing is that Joe traveled in different countries but told me most about the places and countries where he visited the nudist beaches... I believe that there's no nudist beach in the whole world that he had not visited.


DOCTOR: (with some interest.) I wonder where these beaches are located?


ANNA: There're lots of them.


DOCTOR: Try to remember...


ANNA: Is it important?


DOCTOR: No, it"s not important... For instance?


ANNA: I remember only - on Martha"s Vineyard and on Saint. Martin. Unfortunately, I can't remember anything else; after that meeting all those places fell out of my head.


DOCTOR: What happened next?


ANNA: So, we were sitting and talking peacefully. I had already come to myself and told him where I had traveled; I was going to invite him to the table when he suddenly got up and said: "I"ll leave you for five minutes to have a smoke". I said to him: "You may smoke here, in the room". And he replied: "I can't smoke in the room. I'll come back as soon as I have a smoke. It'll take me exactly five minutes". And he went out into the street. So, he left and came back in five minutes. And then he suddenly rushed out of my house and ran across the street to his own... and since then I can't go out into the street.


DOCTOR: I can't understand what happened to your neighbor while he was smoking?


ANNA: What happened to me, not to him. But, please, don't laugh at me.


DOCTOR: Why should I laugh?


ANNA: The point is when Joe was going out to have a smoke he cast a long and significant glance at me as if he wanted to explain something. I trembled with excitement. And it was then that my inner voice said: "Strip off your clothes". It said this so distinctly and clearly as I'm speaking to you now. Then repeated insistently, in the form of order: "Be quick, strip off your clothes, he'll soon come back". At first I didn't want to take off my clothes but the voice insisted: "No, take off everything". I decided to cover my body with a sheet, but the voice said: "Take the sheet away". Then, when I took it away, it said: "Lie down on the sofa and pose as if you were lying on the beach". I must confess that I've never seen those nudist beaches, haven't the slightest idea about them.


DOCTOR: What pose did you take?


ANNA: I simply put my hands behind my head and was lying as if sun bathing. The neighbor came back exactly after five minutes, and you know what happened afterward.


DOCTOR: Why did you put your hands behind the head?


ANNA: I wanted to show my breasts to advantage


DOCTOR: I see...Show me, please, your pose.


Anna puts her hands behind the head.


ANNA: My inner voice ordered me to do it.


DOCTOR: I see... and what did your inner voice say when the neighbor rushed out of the room?


ANNA: Used foul language.


DOCTOR: What did it say?


ANNA: I can't repeat.


DOCTOR: Don't repeat all the words.


ANNA: It said: "Hey, you, ninny, so-and-so... You were in too much a hurry. You shouldn"t strip off your clothes so quickly... To let such a man go!".


DOCTOR: Your inner voice didn"t say anything else?


ANNA: Nothing. Now I can't go in the street. I wait until the neighbor's light in the opposite window goes out, and only then I crawl out, in the morning I get up at an unearthly hour before he gets up and stealthily, like a thief, get in my car.


DOCTOR: Wrong!


ANNA: Doctor, I think my neighbor looks at me through the window and laughs.


DOCTOR: Let me assure you that he doesn't laugh at you.


ANNA: In addition, it seems to me that he told the neighbors about the incident, and they also laugh at me. I can't meet my neighbors, either.


DOCTOR: What could he tell them? Nothing happened, did it?


ANNA: Doctor, that's really the point.


DOCTOR: Don't worry; he told the neighbors nothing, and won't tell.


ANNA: Doctor, how do you know?


DOCTOR: I had similar cases in my practice.


ANNA: But you said that mine was the rare one.


DOCTOR: Besides, I'm a man myself and understand something in male problems.


ANNA: Doctor, what shall I do now?


DOCTOR : What's your inner voice saying to you now?


ANNA: Cursing.


FDOCTOR: Whom?


ANNA: You.


DOCTOR: How?


ANNA: I feel embarrassed, I can't repeat...


DOCTOR: Please, tell me. It's important.


ANNA: Using the same words?


DOCTOR: Absolutely.


ANNA: It says that you're a fucking doctor. You know damn well such problems, you just put on airs.

Pause.

═DOCTOR: I see, split personality... In such a situation I should prescribe a medicine to you.


ANNA: What medicine?


DOCTOR: Small tablets. They help you to get rid of your company. Next time come and see me alone, without your inner voice.


The doctor starts writing the prescription.


ANNA: Doctor, don't trouble, I'll never take them.


DOCTOR: Why not?


ANNA: I don't want to get rid of it.


DOCTOR: But because of it you are having your problems. It doesn't let you go out into the street.


ANNA: Well, forget it, I mean the street.


DOCTOR: And it also whispers in your ear all sorts of nonsense about your neighbor.

Through the next few lines the Doctor slowly puts his feet out straight in front him. Leans back, places his legs apart.


ANNA: All right, I've lived without the neighbor, and I'll live on.


DOCTOR: Here is your prescription.


ANNA: Well, I don't need your tablets.


DOCTOR: I insist, take it, take it!


Doctor holds out the prescription. Anna reluctantly takes it.


DOCTOR: Excellent, well done... I just tried to help you.


ANNA: (sudenly shouts with different voice.) Help? Me? Ha-ha! You first should help yourself,and your inner voice before giving medicine. Look at him sprawling! Imagines himself: I'm a doctor, I'm a man, I understand male problems! Remember where the nudist beaches are located! He is interested in only this! But to listen to the patient isn't interesting! We've sees such doctors. No, we'll go to another one. And that's what we'll do to your prescription!


Anna tears the prescription into small peaces and throws them in the doctor's face. She leaves the office banging the door loudly. Doctor takes the telephone and calls.

DOCTOR. Travel Agency? ... Please, I need one ticket next week... To where?... Oh! Of course, to Saint Martin!