" Thank you, Sir." " Welcome." "Now what is this?" "Loitering in the stairwell, huh?" "This is a decent house." "Now get lost, and make it snappy!" "Out in the street where you belong - you and your racket!" "Don't you ever show up around here again, you hear!" "Lazy riff-raff... 12 dollars - well, finally someone has got some money." " Yes, who is it?" " It's me!" "Oh, Mrs. Wire!" "Please, come in." "Oh, Mrs. Wire!" "I'm just about to get ready for going out, but" "I had meant to stop by you to discuss something that has come up." " Oh, is that so?" " Um, yes." " It's because of..." " Because of what?" "I'm sorry, Mrs. Wire, but you being the landlady - I have to tell you that cockroaches aren't the most desirable kind of roommates." " I suppose you will agree." " Cockroaches, you say?" "Yes indeed." "I haven't had much experience with cockroaches, and the precious few that I have seen in my time, they were the - how do I say it - pedestrian kind - they would walk." "But your kind - they fly!" "Do you understand, Mrs. Wire?" "I was shocked when one of them took off the floor and whizzed through the room - and it nearly hit me on the nose!" "I had to muster all my strength to sit down on this bed and weep." "I was so nauseated by this disgusting vermin." "Just imagine - flying cockroaches!" "I wouldn't have dreamed of something like that." "They whizz and hum all around you - well, in a nutshell, Mrs. Wire:" " This has to stop!" " This has to stop?" "What do you mean?" "Flying cockroaches are all over the place, nothing special about them." "Every old house in the neighborhood has them." " They've got them uptown even!" " Be that as it may, Mrs. Wire -- but not in heaps." "But here, every nook and cranny is crawling and buzzing." "Behind the mirror, under the bed, in the kitchen - they don't even spare the Holy Virgin!" " There, you see?" " Now hold your horses, young lady." "I don't want to change the subject, but I have actually come for something else." "For the record, Mrs. Wire:" "Cockroaches give me convulsions." "Even the ordinary pedestrian kind disgust me profoundly." "Let alone your flying kind!" "So if I'm supposed to stay here any longer, Mrs. Wire, these disgusting things have to go - immediately!" "And you're going to tell me how to keep cockroaches from getting into this room through the open windows, is that it?" "I have no idea, Mrs. Wire, but I am positive that it's only a matter of good will." "All I know is that these sickening things will have to be taken care of." "When I wake up to find one of those crawling critters on my sheets " "I swear to God, Mrs. Wire, I'll get the cramps, I'll die of revulsion!" "Now if you'll excuse my saying so, you'll more likely die from drinking." " I beg your pardon?" " Never mind." "Now let's cut to the chase." "You know full well I'm not here to discuss cockroaches with you." "It's about the money you still owe me for this month." " So, how about it?" " You'll get the balance of the rent as soon as the cockroaches are gone." "If not, I'll leave this house." "Be my guest!" "The sooner the better." "But first you cough up that rent!" "What are you, crazy?" "I can't move immediately, out of the question." "Anyway, I don't have time for this, I have to run some errands." "You pay right now, or I'll call the police!" "And no more cockroach talk." "All I'm saying is that it's not very amusing to share the flat with cockroaches." "Then don't!" "Pack up your shabby belongings and move where there are no cockroaches, neither the flying nor the other kind." " But first you pay up!" " So you insist in having cockroaches?" "I insist in collecting my rent." "Unfortunately, that is impossible." "At the moment, anyway." " Oh, is that so?" "Impossible?" " And I can tell you why." "Mr. King - you know, the manager of my rubber plantation in Brazil, hasn't forwarded the quarterly payment." "It has been overdue for weeks now." "It's unlike Mr. King though, he's usually very punctual." "But in his letter from this morning - where did I put it?" "Here!" "I'll find it any minute now" " I don't know, I can't seem to find it." "Anyway, in this letter he mentions difficulties." "Tax declarations and the Brazilian authorities..." "Stop it already!" "I've had it with your rubber plantation and your punctual Mr. King." "I have been in this business for 17 years, so do you believe you can have me for a fool?" "I know your kind." "What do you mean to imply?" "Do you think I'm deaf and blind?" "You, with your highfalutin' crappy coat of arms over the bed." "What does that mean?" "It means I know first hand from Thrift Store Lily." "Cost you all of a single dollar, that thing." "A Hapsburg, are we?" "My reverence." " And now, my money!" " STOP IT!" "Oh, you - just what I needed." "You will stop harassing this lady with your uncivil greed." " Oh, Mr. Shakespeare, is it?" " I beg your pardon, but this female monster's squealing has disrupted my afternoon nap." "Is that so?" "More like your afternoon whiskey anaesthesia!" "I do need my nap to soothe my nerves, I am a tad sick, you know." "Never mind, good thing you're here." "I'll repeat it for your benefit:" "I have had it with the likes of you, parasites and drunkards!" "I have had it up to here!" "You coke-snorting, whoring scum." "You've got one foot in the grave!" "The whole quarter is infested by you." "Dead birds, is what you are." "Always the same spiel." "Nothing but bragging and empty promises." " I beg you, do not scream!" " Stop that fuss already." "Now you stop picking on that desperate woman right now!" "Whatever happened to compassion and understanding?" "Yes, the Brazilian rubber plantation..." "even if it didn't exist..." " But it does exist!" " But even if, even if those rubber kings didn't exist for that lonely woman that has been dealt such a lousy hand well, then there ought to be rubber kings!" "Can you blame it on her that she tries to balance the unfair dealings of life with a little bit of God-given power of imagination?" "But no, no, that's not imagination!" "I'll have to ask you not to spit your lofty talk in my face." "You, with your 780-page novel" "The masterpiece you keep blabbering about - it belongs right up there with that piece of crap from the thrift store!" "What a nice couple." "The two of you go together well." "Two grandmasters of God-given power of imagination!" "Craziness - that's what I call it." "So what?" "So what if it was like you say, Mrs. Monster?" "For argument's sake, let's assume that my masterpiece doesn't exist." "It wouldn't exist, Mrs. Monster - except for a few scribbled pages down on the bottom of my old ragged suitcase right next to the other bold drafts of short stories and novels all of them going nowhere, never reaching the final chapter" "Suppose I once had the ambition to become a great artist once, but I had neither talent nor perseverance enough" "And again, suppose I then would have taken a downward spiral from one boozing joint to the next, one bottle after the other, and I finally would have ended up in this bordello, on a bug-infested mattress" "and then, Mrs. Wire - in order to overcome this nightmare, no, to even make it tolerable, I would glorify it, finally embellish it with pieces of my imagination, with dreams and illusions - like the existence of the 780-page masterpiece," "just keep supposing, Mrs. Wire, that I tried to exist in this miserable world of fabrications - what satisfaction would you, Mrs. Wire, draw from tearing all of this into little pieces, to crush it," " and to just call it a lie?" "You don't say!" "You're one to lip off." "Mrs. Wire, you may be correct in saying that I am a liar." "But now you listen to me, Mrs. Wire, and listen carefully." "There are no lies except those that a person needs to survive." "Those that are shoved up one's trap by the hard fist of necessity" "Yes, only those, Mrs. Wire." "Please leave now." "I am tired, and I have said what I had to say." "Just leave, will you!" "And leave that poor woman alone." "I'll be back tomorrow morning." "Money or out you go, the two of you!" "Including your 780-page masterpiece and your Brazilian rubber plantation." "Filthy scum!" "Dead birds" "All of us" "Here, puss puss" "Roaches all over the place." "Wallpaper, ceiling, walls - the entire house is infested with them!" "I know." "I suppose there was no such vermin on your rubber plantation?" "No, of course not." "Everything was spotless." "At all times." "Always." " The floors bright and clean, like..." " Like mirrors!" "And I suppose there was a marvelous view from the windows?" " Unspeakably beautiful." " Is the mansion far from the coast?" " From the Mediterranean, I mean." " Mediterranean?" "Just two minutes." "Give or take a few minutes." "I am sure that on a bright clear morning you'd be able to make out the famous White Cliffs of Dover?" "Over on the English side of the Channel." "Yes, on a clear day you can see them." "All white." " Help yourself." " Thank you, Mr. " "Chekhov." "Anton Pavlovitch Chekhov." "Many thanks, Mr. Checkhov." "You're welcome." "You're very welcome." "Checkhov - funny name."