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[BERNARD is a quiet, earnest, but self-assured young man. WILLY’S voice is coming from right upstage now. BERNARD lowers his feet off the table and listens. JENNY, his father’s secretary, enters.]

JENNY [distressed]: Say, Bernard, will you go out in the hall?

BERNARD: What is that noise? Who is it?

JENNY: Mr. Loman. He just got off the elevator.

BERNARD [ getting up]: Who’s he arguing with?

JENNY: Nobody. There’s nobody with him. I can’t deal with him any more, and your father gets all upset everytime he comes. I’ve got a lot of typing to do, and your father’s waiting to sign it. Will you see him?

WILLY [entering]: Touchdown! Touch—[He sees JENNY.] Jenny, Jenny, good to see you. How’re ya? Workin’? Or still honest?

JENNY: Fine. How’ve you been feeling?

WILLY: Not much any more, Jenny. Ha, ha! [He is surprised to see the rackets.]

BERNARD: Hello, Uncle Willy.

WILLY [almost shocked]: Bernard! Well, look who’s here!

[He comes quickly, guiltily, to BERNARD and warmly shakes his hand.]

BERNARD: How are you? Good to see you.

WILLY: What are you doing here?

BERNARD: Oh, just stopped by to see Pop. Get off my feet till my train leaves. I’m going to Washington in a few minutes.

WILLY: Is he in?

BERNARD: Yes, he’s in his office with the accountant. Sit down.

WILLY [sitting down]: What’re you going to do in Washington?

BERNARD: Oh, just a case I’ve got there, Willy.

WILLY: That so? [Indicating the rackets] You going to play tennis there?

BERNARD: I’m staying with a friend who’s got a court.

WILLY: Don’t say. His own tennis court. Must be fine people, I bet.

BERNARD: They are, very nice. Dad tells me Biff ’s in town.

WILLY [with a big smile]: Yeah, Biff ’s in. Working on a very big deal, Bernard.

BERNARD: What’s Biff doing?

WILLY: Well, he’s been doing very big things in the West. But he decided to establish himself here. Very big. We’re having dinner. Did I hear your wife had a boy?

BERNARD: That’s right. Our second.

WILLY: Two boys! What do you know!

BERNARD: What kind of a deal has Biff got?

WILLY: Well, Bill Oliver—very big sporting-goods man —he wants Biff very badly. Called him in from the West. Long distance, carte blanche, special deliveries. Your friends have their own private tennis court?

BERNARD: You still with the old firm, Willy?

WILLY [after a pause]: I’m—I’m overjoyed to see how you made the grade, Bernard, overjoyed. It’s an encouraging thing to see a young man really—really—Looks very good for Biff—very—[He breaks off, then] Bernard—[He is so full of emotion, he breaks off again.]

BERNARD: What is it, Willy?

WILLY [small and alone]: What—what’s the secret?

BERNARD: What secret?

WILLY: How—how did you? Why didn’t he ever catch on?

BERNARD: I wouldn’t know that, Willy.

WILLY [confidentially, desperately]: You were his friend, his boyhood friend. There’s something I don’t understand about it. His life ended after that Ebbets Field game. From the age of seventeen nothing good ever happened to him.

BERNARD: He never trained himself for anything.

WILLY: But he did, he did. After high school he took so many correspondence courses. Radio mechanics; television; God knows what, and never made the slightest mark.

BERNARD [taking off his glasses]: Willy, do you want to talk candidly?

WILLY [rising, faces BERNARD]: I regard you as a very brilliant man, Bernard. I value your advice.

BERNARD: Oh, the hell with the advice, Willy. I couldn’t advise you. There’s just one thing I’ve always wanted to ask you. When he was supposed to graduate, and the math teacher flunked him—

WILLY: Oh, that son-of-a-bitch ruined his life.

BERNARD: Yeah, but, Willy, all he had to do was to go to summer school and make up that subject.

WILLY: That’s right, that’s right.

BERNARD: Did you tell him not to go to summer school?

WILLY: Me? I begged him to go. I ordered him to go!

BERNARD: Then why wouldn’t he go?

WILLY: Why? Why! Bernard, that question has been trailing me like a ghost for the last fifteen years.