A Little Night Music - You Must Meet My Wife

[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 AND DESIREE]

Yes, you must.
Yes, I must.