FREDRIK:
She lightens my sadness,
She livens my days,
She bursts with a kind of madness
My well-ordered ways.
My happiest mistake, the ache of my life:
You must meet my wife.
She bubbles with pleasure,
She glows with surprise,
Disrupts my accustomed leisure
And ruffles my ties.
I don't know even now quite how it began.
You must meet my wife, my Anne.
One thousand whims to which I give in,
Since her smallest tear turns me ashen.
I never dreamed that I could live in
So completely demented, contented a fashion.
So sunlike, so winning,
So unlike a wife.
I do think that I'm beginning
To show signs of life.
Don't ask me how at my age one still can grow--
If you met my wife, you'd know.
DESIREE [speaking]: Dear Fredrik, I'm just longing to meet her. Sometime.
FREDRIK:
She sparkles...
DESIREE:
How pleasant.
FREDRIK:
She twinkles...
DESIREE:
How nice.
FREDRIK:
Her youth is a sort of present--
DESIREE:
Whatever the price.
FREDRIK:
The incandescent--what?--the--
DESIREE [offering a cigarette]:
Light?
FREDRIK:
--of my life.
You must meet my wife.
DESIREE:
Yes, I must. I really must. Now--
FREDRIK:
She flutters.
DESIREE:
How charming.
FREDRIK:
She twitters.
DESIREE:
My word!
FREDRIK:
She floats.
DESIREE:
Isn't that alarming?
What is she, a bird?
FREDRIK:
She makes me feel I'm--what?--
DESIREE:
A very old man.
FREDRIK:
Yes--no!
DESIREE:
No?
FREDRIK:
But--
DESIREE:
I must meet your Gertrude.
FREDRIK:
My Anne.
DESIREE:
Sorry--Anne.
FREDRIK:
She loves my voice, my walk, my mustache,
The cigar, in fact, that I'm smoking.
She'll watch me puff until it's just ash,
Then she'll save the cigar butt.
DESIREE:
Bizarre, but
You're joking.
FREDRIK:
She dotes on--
DESIREE:
Your dimple.
FREDRIK:
My snoring.
DESIREE:
How dear.
FREDRIK:
The point is, she's really simple.
DESIREE:
Yes, that much seems clear.
FREDRIK:
She gives me funny names--
DESIREE:
Like?
FREDRIK:
"Old Dry-as-Dust."
DESIREE:
Wouldn't she just?
FREDRIK:
You must meet my wife.
DESIREE:
Yes, I must, yes, I must.
FREDRIK:
A sea of whims that I submerge in,
Yet so loveable in repentance.
Unfortunately still a virgin,
But you can't force a flower--
DESIREE:
Don't finish that sentence!
She's monstrous!
FREDRIK:
She's frightened.
DESIREE:
Unfeeling!
FREDRIK:
Unversed.
She'd strike you as unenlightened--
DESIREE:
No, I'd strike her first.
FREDRIK:
Her reticence, her apprehension--
DESIREE:
Her crust!
FREDRIK:
No!
DESIREE:
Yes!
FREDRIK:
No!
DESIREE:
Fredrik!
FREDRIK:
You must meet my wife.
DESIREE:
Let me get my hat and my knife!
FREDRIK:
What was that?
DESIREE:
I must meet your wife.
FREDRIK: DESIREE:
Yes, you must. Yes, I must.
