LUIGI PIRANDELLO
317
MAN WITH THE FLOWER: A good time! . . . I should say! . . . Tell me—have you ever been to see a good doctor?
THE cUSTOMER: I? . . . No. Why? . . . I've never been sick.
MAN WITH THE FLOWER: No—no. . . . I meant, have you ever noticed, in a doctor's office, the waiting-room where the patients sit until their turn comes?
THE CUSTOMER: Ah, yes. . . . I once took my daughter to see a doctor. . . . Something wrong with her nerves—
MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Well—I wasn't prying, you know. I meant that those waiting-rooms. . . . (A pause.) Did you ever notice?—a black horse-hair sofa in some old-fashioned style . . . upholstered chairs, that hardly ever match . . . an arm-chair or two—huh—second-hand stuff—picked up where they can find it. Put there for the patients. . . . Nothing to do with the house, you see. . . . The doctor—huh! . . . for himself, his wife, and his wife's friends, he has a fine parlour, comfortable, done up in style. . . . And what a noise one of those chairs in the parlour would make if you stuck it in there in the waiting-room! . . . Why—you need things about as they are—good, decent stuff, of course—not too showy—stuff that will wear. Because it'll be used by all sorts of people who come to see the doctor. I wonder. . . . When you went to the doctor's with your daughter that
time—did you notice the chairs you sat on while you were waiting?
THE CUSTOMER: To tell the truth, I . . . I didn't!
MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Oh, of course you didn't—because you weren't sick. . . . (A pause.) But even sick people don't always notice—all taken up as they are with what's wrong with them. (A pause.) And yet, oftentimes some of them sit there, looking so carefully at one of their fingers, which is going round and round, making letters and numbers that have no meaning, on the varnished arm of the chair where they are sitting. They're thinking. They don't really see. (A pause.) But what a strange impression it makes on you, when, as you go through the waiting-room again, after you are through with the doctor, you catch a glimpse of that chair where you were sitting just a few moments before—anxious to have some opinion on your
