Scene I

                                    DUTCHMAN

       CHARACTERS

CLAY, twenty‐year‐old Negro

LULA, thirty‐year‐old white woman

RIDERS OF COACH

white and black YOUNG NEGRO CONDUCTOR

In the flying underbelly of the city Steaming hot, and summer on top, outside. Underground. The subway heaped in modern myth.

Opening scene is a man sitting in a subway seat, holding a magazine but looking vacantly just above its wilting pages. Occasionally he looks blankly toward the window on his right. Dim lights and darkness whistling by against the glass. 

....

The man looks idly up, until he sees a woman's face staring at him through the window; when it realizes that the man has noticed the face, it begins very premeditatedly to smile. The man smiles too, for a moment, without a trace of self­consciousness. 

.....

He smiles then; more comfortably confident, hoping perhaps that his memory of this brief encounter will be pleasant. And then he is idle again.

Scene I

Train roars. Lights flash outside the windows.

LULA enters from the rear of the car in bright, skimpy summer clothes and sandals. She carries a net bag full of paper books, fruit, and other anonymous articles. She is wearing sunglasses, which she pushes up on her forehead from time to time. LULA is a tall, slender, beautiful woman with long red hair hanging straight down her back, wearing only loud lipstick in some body's good taste. She is eating an apple, very daintily. Coming down the car toward CLAY. She stops beside CLAY'S seat and hangs languidly from the strap, still managing to eat the apple. It is apparent that she is going to sit in the seat next to CLAY, and that she is only waiting for him to notice her before she sits.

 ....

LULA I'm going to sit down ....... O.K.?

CLAY Sure.

      .....

LULA Weren't you staring at me through the window? At the last stop?

CLAY Staring at you? What do you mean?

LULA Don't you know what staring means?

CLAY I saw you through the window.... if that's what it means. I don't know if I was staring. Seems to me you were staring through the window at me.

....

LULA I even got into this train, going some other way than mine. Walked down the aisle....... searching you out.

CLAY Really? That's pretty funny.

LULA That's pretty funny:"..... God, you're dull.

CLAY Well, I'm sorry, lady, but I really wasn't prepared for party talk.

       LULA No, you're not. What are you prepared for? [Wrapping the apple core in a Kleenex and dropping it on the floor]

       CLAY [Takes her conversation as pure sex talk. He turns to confront her squarely with this idea] I'm prepared for anything. How about you?

LULA [Laughing loudly and cutting it off abruptly] What do you think you're doing? 

CLAY What?

LULA You think I want to pick you up, get you to take me somewhere and screw me, huh? 

CLAY Is that the way I look?

       LULA You look like you been trying to grow a beard. That's exactly what you look like. You look like you live in New Jersey with your parents and are trying to grow a beard. That's what. You look like you've been reading Chinese poetry and drinking lukewarm sugarless tea. [Laughs, uncrossing and recrossing her legs] You look like death eating a soda cracker.

      CLAY [Cocking his head from one side to the other, embarrassed and trying to make some comeback, but also intrigued by what the woman is saying .. even the sharp city coarseness of her voice, which is still a kind of gentle sidewalk throb] Really? I look like all that?

     LULA Not all of it. [She feints a seriousness to cover an actual somber tone] I lie a lot. [Smiling] It helps me control the world.

CLAY [Relieved and laughing louder than the humor] Yeah, I bet. 

LULA But it's true, most of it, right? Jersey? Your bumpy neck?

CLAY How'd you know all that? Huh? Really, I mean about Jersey..... and even the beard. I met you before? You know Warren Enright?

       LULA You tried to make it with your sister when you were ten. [CLAY leans back hard against the back of the seat, his eyes opening now, still trying to look amused] But I succeeded a few weeks ago. [She starts to laugh again] 

       CLAY What're you talking about? Warren tell you that? You're a friend of Georgia's?

LULA I told you I lie. I don't know your sister. I don't know Warren Enright. 

CLAY You mean you're just picking these things out of the air?

LULA Is Warren Enright a tall skinny black black boy with a phony English accent? 

CLAY I figured you knew him.

LULA But I don't. I just figured you would know somebody like that. [Laughs]

....

      LULA How do I know? [She returns her hand, without moving it, then takes it away and plunges it in her bag to draw out an apple] You want this?

CLAY Sure.

....

LULA I told you I didn't know anything about you......... you're a well‐known type.

....

CLAY [Raising his voice, thinking the train noise has drowned part of his sentence] I can't argue with you . 

LULA My hair is turning gray. A gray hair for each year and type I've come through.

....

CLAY How can I ask you when I don't know your name?

LULA Are you talking to my name? 

CLAY What is it, a secret?

  LULA I'm Lena the Hyena. 

 CLAY The famous woman poet? 

 LULA Poetess! The same!

CLAY Well, you know so much about me ... what's my name? 

LULA Morris the Hyena.

....

       LULA [Starts laughing again] Now you say to me, "Lula, Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight?" It's your turn, and let those be your lines.

CLAY Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight, Huh? 

LULA Say my name twice before you ask, and no huh's.

CLAY Lula, Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight?

LULA I'd like to go, Clay, but how can you ask me to go when you barely know me? 

CLAY That is strange, isn't it?

       LULA What kind of reaction is that? You're supposed to say, "Aw, come on, we'll get to know each other better at the party."

       ....

       CLAY cocks his head to see the title of the book. Noise of the train. LULA flips pages and her eyes drift. Both remain silent] Are you going to the party with me, Lula?   

LULA [Bored and not even looking] I don't even know you.

CLAY You said you know my type.

LULA [Strangely irritated] Don't get smart with me, Buster. I know you like the palm of my hand.

CLAY The one you eat the apples with?

      LULA Yeah. And the one I open doors late Saturday evening with. That's my door. Up at the top of the stairs. Five flights. Above a lot of Italians . and lying Americans. And scrape carrots with: Also. [Looks at him] the same hand I unbutton my dress with, or let my skirt fall down. Same hand. Lover.

CLAY Are you angry about anything? Did I say something wrong?

LULA Everything you say is wrong. [Mock smile] That's what makes you so attractive. Ha. In that funny book jacket with all the buttons. [More animate, taking hold of his jacket] What've you got that jacket and tie on in all this heat for? And why're you wearing a jacket and tie like that? Did your people ever burn witches or start revolutions over the price of tea? Boy, those narrow‐shoulder clothes come from a tradition you ought to feel oppressed by. A three‐button suit. What right do you have to be wearing a three‐button suit and striped tie? Your grandfather was a slave, he didn't go to Harvard.

CLAY My grandfather was a night watchman.                     

LULA And you went to a colored college where everybody thought they were Averell Harriman. 

CLAY All except me.

LULA And who did you think you were? Who do you think you are now?

       CLAY [Laughs as if to make light of the whole trend of the conversation] Well, in college I thought I was Baudelaire. But I've slowed down since.

    LULA I bet you never once thought you were a black nigger. [Mock serious, then she howls with laughter. 

        CLAY is stunned but after initial reaction, he quickly tries to appreciate the humor. 

       LULA almost shrieks] A black Baudelaire.

CLAY That's right.

       LULA Boy, are you corny. I take back what I said before. Everything you say is not wrong. It's perfect. You should be on television.

CLAY You act like you're on television already. 

LULA That's because I'm an actress.

CLAY I thought so.

       LULA Well, you're wrong. I'm no actress. I told you I always lie. I'm nothing, honey, and don't you ever forget it. [Lighter] Although my mother was a Communist. The only person in my family ever to amount to anything.

CLAY My mother was a Republican.

LULA And your father voted for the man rather than the party. 

CLAY Right!

LULA Yea for him. Yea, yea for him. 

CLAY Yea!

LULA And yea for America where he is free to vote for the mediocrity of his choice! Yea! 

CLAY Yea!

.....

       LULA You’re a murderer, Clay, and you know it. [Her voice darkening with significance] You know goddamn well what I mean.

CLAY I do?

LULA So we’ll pretend the air is light and full of perfume. 

CLAY [Sniffing at her blouse] It is.

 LULA And we’ll pretend that people cannot see you. That is, the citizens. And that you are free of your own history. And I am free of my history. We’ll pretend that we are both anonymous beauties smashing along through the city’s entrails [She yells as loud as she can] GROOVE! [Black]