STANLEY:

There is such a thing in this state of Louisiana as the Napoleonic code, according to which whatever belongs to my wife is also mine--and vice versa.

BLANCHE:

My, but you have an impressive judicial air!

[She sprays herself with her atomizer; then playfully sprays him with it. He seizes the atomizer and slams it down on the dresser. She throws back her head and laughs.]

STANLEY:

If I didn't know that you was my wife's sister I'd get ideas about you!

BLANCHE:

Such as what!

STANLEY:

Don't play so dumb. You know what!

BLANCHE [she puts the atomizer on the table]:

All right. Cards on the table. That suits me.

[She turns to Stanley.]

I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty percent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth, and this is the truth:

I haven't cheated my sister or you or anyone else as long as I have lived.

STANLEY:

Where's the papers? In the trunk?

BLANCHE:

Everything that I own is in that trunk.

[Stanley crosses to the trunk, shoves it roughly open and begins to open compartments.]

BLANCHE:

What in the name of heaven are you thinking of! What's in the back of that little boy's mind of yours? That I am absconding with something, attempting some kind of treachery on my sister?--Let me do that! It will be faster and simpler....

[She crosses to the trunk and takes out a box]

I keep my papers mostly in this tin box.

[She opens it.]

STANLEY:

What's them underneath?

[He indicates another sheaf of papers.

BLANCHE:

These are love-letters, yellowing with antiquity, all from one boy.

[He snatches them up. She speaks fiercely]

Give those back to me!

STANLEY:

I'll have a look at them first!

BLANCHE:

The touch of your hands insults them!

STANLEY:

Don't pull that stuff!

[He rips off the ribbon and starts to examine them. Blanche snatches them from him, and they cascade to the floor.]

BLANCHE:

Now that you've touched them I'll burn them!

STANLEY [staring, baffled]:

What in hell are they?

BLANCHE [on the floor gathering them up]:

Poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can't! I'm not young and vulnerable any more. But my young husband was and I--never mind about that! Just give them back to me!

STANLEY:

What do you mean by saying you'll have to burn them?

BLANCHE:

I'm sorry, I must have lost my head for a moment. Everyone has something he wont let others touch because of their--intimate nature....

[She now seems faint with exhaustion and she sits down with the strong box and puts on a pair of glasses and goes methodically through a large stack of papers.] Ambler & Ambler. Hmmmmm.... Crabtree.... More Ambler & Ambler.

STANLEY:

What is Ambler & Ambler?

BLANCHE:

A firm that made loans on the place.

STANLEY:

Then it was lost on a mortgage?

BLANCHE [touching her forehead]:

That must've been what happened.

STANLEY:

I don't want no ifs, ands or buts! What's all the rest of them papers?

[She hands him the entire box. He carries it to the table and starts to examine the papers.]

BLANCHE [picking up a large envelope containing more papers]:

There are thousands of papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications--to put it plainly!

[She removes her glasses with an exhausted laugh]

The four-letter word deprived us of our plantation, till finally all that was left--and Stella can verify that!--was the house itself and about twenty acres of ground, including a graveyard, to which now all but Stella and I have retreated.

[She pours the contents of the envelope on the table]

Here all of them are, all papers! I hereby endow you with them! Take them, peruse them--commit them to memory, even! I think it's wonderfully fitting that Belle Reve should finally be this bunch of old papers in your big, capable hands!... I wonder if Stella's come back with my lemon-coke....

[She leans back and closes her eyes.]

STANLEY:

I have a lawyer acquaintance who will study these out.

BLANCHE:

Present them to him with a box of aspirin tablets.

STANLEY [becoming somewhat sheepish]:

You see, under the Napoleonic code--a man has to take an interest in his wife's affairs--especially now that she's going to have a baby.

[Blanche opens her eyes. The "blue piano" sounds louder.]

BLANCHE:

Stella? Stella going to have a baby?

[dreamily]

I didn't know she was going to have a baby!

[She gets up and crosses to the outside door. Stella appears around the corner with a carton from the drugstore.

[Stanley goes into the bedroom with the envelope and the box.

[The inner rooms fade to darkness and the outside wall of the house is visible. Blanche meets Stella at the foot of the steps to the sidewalk.]

BLANCHE:

Stella, Stella for star! How lovely to have a baby! It's all right. Everything's all right.

STELLA:

I'm sorry he did that to you.

BLANCHE:

Oh, I guess he's just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he's what we need to mix with our blood now that we've lost Belle Reve. We thrashed it out. I feel a bit shaky, but I think I handled it nicely, I laughed and treated it all as a joke.

[Steve and Pablo appear, carrying a case of beer.]

I called him a little boy and laughed and flirted. Yes, I was flirting with your husband!

[as the men approach]

The guests are gathering for the poker party.

[The two men pass between them, and enter the house.]

Which way do we go now, Stella--this way?

STELLA:

No, this way.

[She leads Blanche away.]

BLANCHE [laughing]:

The blind are leading the blind!

[A tamale vendor is heard calling.]

VENDOR'S VOICE:

Red-hot!

SCENE THREE

THE POKER NIGHT. There is a picture of Van Gogh's of a billiard-parlor at night. The kitchen now suggests that sort of lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colors of childhood's spectrum. Over the yellow linoleum of the kitchen table hangs an electric bulb with a vivid green glass shade. The poker players--Stanley, Steve, Mitch and Pablo--wear colored shirts, solid blues, a purple, a red-and-white check, a light green, and they are men at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors. There are vivid slices of watermelon on the table, whiskey bottles and glasses. The bedroom is relatively dim with only the light that spills between the portieres and through the wide window on the street. For a moment, there is absorbed silence as a hand is dealt.

STEVE:

Anything wild this deal?

PABLO:

One-eyed jacks are wild.

STEVE:

Give me two cards.

PABLO:

You, Mitch?

MITCH:

I'm out

PABLO:

One.

MITCH:

Anyone want a shot?

STANLEY:

Yeah. Me.

PABLO:

Why don't somebody go to the Chinaman's and bring back a load of chop suey?

STANLEY:

When I'm losing you want to eat! Ante up! Openers? Openers! Get y'r ass off the table, Mitch. Nothing belongs on a poker table but cards, chips and whiskey.

[He lurches up and tosses some watermelon rinds to the floor.]

MITCH:

Kind of on your high horse, ain't you?

STANLEY:

How many?

STEVE:

Give me three.

STANLEY:

One.

MITCH:

I'm out again. I oughta go home pretty soon.

STANLEY: