(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 bu*t.
(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.
(Both)
Yes, you must.
Yes, I must.