Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes (1967) by Terry Southern

Author:Terry Southern [Southern, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
ISBN: 0806511672
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 1967-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Apartment to Exchange

CHARACTERS:

FRANZ KAFKA: About 34, of medium height, slender build, and with a thin, haunted, extremely sensitive face; he is carefully dressed in the dark-suited style of a provincial bank clerk. There is an odd stiff meticulousness and deliberation in his behavior, which convey the heightened self-awareness he has of his every word and movement.

FRAU KAFKA, his mother: A high-strung, possessive woman of about 55—not nervous in the usual sense of being “fidgety,” but seemingly in a state of constant impatience, bordering on exasperation and often plunging into it.

DOCTOR FREUD: About 60, a large and dynamic man with silver hair and a beard of professorial cut. He is also dressed in a dark suit; but, unlike Kafka, his clothes seem baggy and unkempt, as if such matters of appearance were of trivial concern. He is exceedingly self-assured, at times almost blustering, speech loud and jovial, movements sweeping in the grand manner—and while he occasionally lapses into momentary meditative silence (thoughtfully stroking his beard) there is a certain bright shrewdness which equally often lights his face . . . a curious sort of twinkling calculation, whenever he chances to overhear a telling remark.

Scene One

Early evening. We are in the apartment in Prague which Kafka shares with his mother. It is a small living-room in excruciatingly middle-class taste: divan and matching armchair, several hideous lamps, a mantle clock and family-portraits, two or three grotesque vases and plaster figures, a landscape painting, a large souvenir seashell, a radio, a row of books, etc. Near the wall, stage left, is a small writing-desk.

Despite the bric-a-brac, diligent housekeeping has given the room (in certain half-lights) the illusion of neatness and order, even, perhaps, of coziness.

As the curtain rises we see FRAU KAFKA seated in the armchair, center stage, staring straight ahead and drumming her fingers impatiently on the arm of the chair. After a second she glances at the mantel clock (it is six o’clock); she sighs elaborately, and at that moment there is a sound of the door, stage right, being unlocked. frau kafka folds her arms, stares at the door, FRANZ enters.

FRAU KAFKA: [In a cheery sing-song voice, barely disguising the hysteria beneath it:] Lay-ate, Franz! You are lay-ate!

FRANZ: [Frowns, glances at his watch, checking it against the mantel clock, and speaks with maniacal calm:] No, you’re wrong there, Mother. I left the office at 5:35; it is two minutes after six now; the 27 minutes were spent in walking to and from each of the bus termini [raises a finger, adds smugly as though playing his trump card] and . . . and on the bus itself. [Softens, reasonable.] If by “late” however you mean in a figurative sense, it may well be that certain interpretations . . . interpretations, may I say which have—

FRAU KAFKA: [Interrupts by seizing her head in both hands and screaming:] Franz!

[She gets up, walks quickly over to him, demands:] Did you place the ad?

FRANZ: [He has begun to remove his coat.] Yes.

FRAU KAFKA: [Impatiently.] Well,

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