Pinter's Landscape

Pinter's Landscape JAMES EIGO e· HAROLD PINTER'S PLAYWRITING is frequently a triumph of noncommunication between his characters. Their dialogue abounds in contradictions , repetitions, delayed reactions, and small talk suggesting their reluctance or their inability to communicate. At moments of extreme tension, the dialogue can narrow to monologue. Pinter's first play, The Room, opens with a monologue that falls on deaf ears; in The Caretaker Aston's long speech establishes him as a sympathetic character. Not until Landscape,however, does Pinter limit all his dialogue to monologue. At the most obvious level, this technique defines the separation of the play's characters, Beth and Duff. Duff often addresses Beth directly, but he never seems to hear her. And Beth seems totally unaware of Duffs presence. To summarise the plot is to list the contents of the separate monologues of Beth and Duff. Beth remembers a past love affair·: a day at the beach with her unidentified lover and the subsequent drink at a hotel bar. The following day is spent alone, in the kitchen where we now find her. Her only utterances unrelated to these events are implicit contradictions. She wishes to go back to her former state, and yet she asserts that she is still beautiful. Duffs monologue is not so confined. He remembers many incidents, and they are usually more recent than Beth's memories. Only the day before, he has visited a nearby park, where it rains, and the local pub, where he converses with a stranger. He also tells us that the dog disappeared the day before. His older memories provide some background for the couple's present situation. Once servants employed by a Mr. Sykes, they now live alone in his country house. Duff remembers a trip with Mr. Sykes, a revelation to Beth that he has been unfaithful, their subsequent reconciliation, a visit to the pond with Beth, a dinner party with Sykes's relatives, and his own violent 179 180 JAMES EIGO attack on Beth. His memories are interspersed with pleas that Beth react to him, with expressions for hope in the future. Beth's memories are few and repetitive while Duffs repertory is more varied. The monologues are puzzling in the theater because they seem so disparate. However, Pinter has related them subtly, above his characters' heads, as it were. Though the two characters talk at, rather than to, each other, their speeches interact at several points. Often these points of intersection emphasize the couple's isolation. Beth's account of her day spent lying near the ocean with her lover bears a superficial similarity to Duff's mention of a couple lying by the pond in the park. But Beth's account is romantic; the beach is an Eden. Duffs couple is forced to take shelter from the rain; his landscape offers nothing to balance the moisture, as the sand does in Beth's memory. Neither story of tenderness is relevant to the couple we see before us. One account belongs to the past while the other refers to strangers. Many seemingly trivial details link the two monologues. Beth mentions "one exception" to the rule that men always treat her kindly; Duff provides the material for that exception in his recollection of tearing off the chain around Beth's waist. Beth alludes to her own gravity when arranging flowers, but when Duff concurs (" ... you didn't laugh much. You were ... grave."), she counters with: "I laughed, with him."l Duff mentions he would not feed ducks but sparrows; later he recalls that Beth fed the ducks. Both remember a blue dress that their employer gave to Beth. While Beth talks of the sea, Duff talks of fishing. Beth's account of the hotel bar intersects Duffs account of the pub; the former is elegant, the latter coarse. After Duff compliments Beth on her cooking, she remembers the lunch she cooked for her lover. Just as Beth and her lover are so close "they almost touch," Duff recalls: "Without touching you, I could feel your bottom" (p. 27). Furthermore, Duff remembers that on this occasion Beth looked out the window rather than at him. Beth can rember hearing her lover...