Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry [42]
ASAGAI I came over … I had some free time. I thought I might help with the packing. Ah, I like the look of packing crates! A household in preparation for a journey! It depresses some people … but for me … it is another feeling. Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress … It makes me think of Africa.
BENEATHA Africa!
ASAGAI What kind of a mood is this? Have I told you how deeply you move me?
BENEATHA He gave away the money, Asagai …
ASAGAI Who gave away what money?
BENEATHA The insurance money. My brother gave it away.
ASAGAI Gave it away?
BENEATHA He made an investment! With a man even Travis wouldn’t have trusted with his most worn-out marbles.
ASAGAI And it’s gone?
BENEATHA Gone!
ASAGAI I’m very sorry … And you, now?
BENEATHA Me? … Me? … Me, I’m nothing … Me. When I was very small … we used to take our sleds out in the wintertime and the only hills we had were the ice-covered stone steps of some houses down the street. And we used to fill them in with snow and make them smooth and slide down them all day … and it was very dangerous, you know … far too steep … and sure enough one day a kid named Rufus came down too fast and hit the sidewalk and we saw his face just split open right there in front of us … And I remember standing there looking at his bloody open face thinking that was the end of Rufus. But the ambulance came and they took him to the hospital and they fixed the broken bones and they sewed it all up … and the next time I saw Rufus he just had a little line down the middle of his face … I never got over that …
ASAGAI What?
BENEATHA That that was what one person could do for another, fix him up—sew up the problem, make him all right again. That was the most marvelous thing in the world … I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know—and make them whole again. This was truly being God …
ASAGAI YOU wanted to be God?
BENEATHA No—I wanted to cure. It used to be so important to me. I wanted to cure. It used to matter. I used to care. I mean about people and how their bodies hurt …
ASAGAI And you’ve stopped caring?
BENEATHA Yes—I think so.
ASAGAI Why?
BENEATHA (Bitterly) Because it doesn’t seem deep enough, close enough to what ails mankind! It was a child’s way of seeing things—or an idealist’s.
ASAGAI Children see things very well sometimes—and idealists even better.
BENEATHA I know that’s what you think. Because you are still where I left off. You with all your talk and dreams about Africa! You still think you can patch up the world. Cure the Great Sore of Colonialism—(Loftily, mocking it) with the Penicillin of Independence—!
ASAGAI Yes!
BENEATHA Independence and then what? What about all the crooks and thieves and just plain idiots who will come into power and steal and plunder the same as before—only now they will be black and do it in the name of the new Independence—WHAT ABOUT THEM?!
ASAGAI That will be the problem for another time. First we must get there.
BENEATHA And where does it end?
ASAGAI End? Who even spoke of an end? To life? To living?
BENEATHA An end to misery! To stupidity! Don’t you see there isn’t any real progress, Asagai, there is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture in front of us—our own little mirage that we think is the future.
ASAGAI That is the mistake.
BENEATHA What?
ASAGAI What you just said about the circle. It isn’t a circle—it is simply a long line—as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end—we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd but those who see the changes—who dream, who will not give up—are called idealists … and those who see only the circle we call them the “realists”!
BENEATHA Asagai, while I