Edgar Doctorow - Drinks Before Dinner

JOEL So it is clear, then, that those who do best in life are those who get on with it. Life is surely merciful to those who get on with it. Yes. So that is what we do. We get up in the morning and go about our business. We get up and go to our jobs, if we have jobs, or to the unemployment lines those who don’t have them. And there is the holding of a job and then losing it, or the looking for a job and not finding it, and of course the getting of a job and hating it. All that is getting on with it. Meeting someone, making a marriage of whatever duration, is getting on with it. Having a job and having a family is surely getting on with it. And everyone each morning, no matter what his or her feelings, gets up and gets on with it. And that is what makes the romance of the cities.

MICHAEL I beg your pardon, did you say the romance of the cities?

JOEL Look at those lights. Isn’t that romance? Isn’t that human enterprise shining like a constellation? Don’t tell me I can’t walk in the park at night. We’re a great civilization. There was poverty and disease in Renaissance Italy. There was filth and degradation in Edwardian London. Were these not great civilizations? You feel the romance of the city by living in it. You feel it in the lights of the evening, you feel it in the day when everyone is going about his business. A person’s spirit is lifted by the doing of what everyone else is doing at the same time. That is the appeal, for example, of public dancing. That is the appeal of soldiers marching. In this country we work on our own behalf but together with others who work on their own behalf. The spirit is lifted by the numbers of people working for their future in the same rhythms as others working for their future. The spirit rises on the numbers of people going about their own business together through the streets in the mornings at random speeds and in different rhythms of walking.

EDGAR Yes, so that the spirit is lifted that way, I can see that. It is lifted by the numbers of people walking to their places of business. I agree with that. It is lifted too by the numbers of derelicts marching through the streets to their places of business. It is lifted on the dancing steps of child prostitutes and in the happy song of their pimps. It is lifted on the merry tinkle of empty wine bottles breaking against the sides of buildings, it is lifted on the soaring coloratura of the police cars and ambulances and fire engines going about their business. And it’s lifted to its heights in the exhalations of the dying. People who die, as they are murdered in the streets at night or in the operating rooms of the hospitals in the early morning, release with their last scream the great hallelujah of their dying, and altogether the stabbed and shot and butchered and starved, the overdosed and run-over and burned alive, lift the rest of our spirits in their chorus of dying breath so that we may gaze down in philosophic happiness at the greatness of our civilization.

( The sound of the doorbell , JOEL and CLAUDETTE stand and look at each other )

CLAUDETTE But he said he’d be delayed. ( She goes to the doorway ) No, wait, it’s Grace. Darling!

( Everyone regroups for the new arrival , GRACE enters and is greeted by CLAUDETTE, JOEL, and then by MICHAEL and ANDREA. EDGAR and JOAN are, for a moment, alone )

JOAN (To EDGAR) What has gotten into you! Are you aware of the pains they’ve taken to make this evening successful? You’re being awful! Putting everyone in a state, acting like some nasty destructive child — if you don’t stop, we’ll be asked to leave. In fact, I won’t wait to be asked.

( The new guest , GRACE, is led toward them and JOAN puts on a smiling face , CLAUDETTE’s introductions are not here effusive. They are cursory first-name sort . GRACE sits down and receives a drink. Almost everyone sits. There is an awkward silence )

GRACE Has anyone seen the Hopper retrospective at the Modern?

JOAN Yes, isn’t it marvelous?

GRACE I was disappointed. I used to like Hopper. Now I find I dislike him.

CLAUDETTE Grace is a painter herself.

(EDGAR makes an incoherent sound )

GRACE I beg your pardon?

JOEL Perhaps you can help us, Grace. This evening Edgar is in great pain. We’re trying to console him, but he’s inconsolable. Today he went about his business as usual, and tomorrow he will go about his usual business, but this evening he finds himself inconsolable. Of course, by his own admission he doesn’t know anything the rest of us don’t know, nor perceive anything we can’t perceive. We all know and perceive the same things. As a physician I probably have more of a reason than anyone to be inconsolable. I know of more disgusting and degrading means of dying than anyone else in this room could possibly know. Every day of the week I perform five or six operations of the same kind. I get up early in the morning to do that. Every day in the week thousands of physicians all over the country get up very early in the morning to do the same operations for the people who have come to us for the same conditions for which other people have come to us. The admissions officers of hospital emergency rooms can calculate by the week and month and year how many knifings they will get, how many shootings, how many cardiac arrests, how many ODs, how many car wrecks. They know in advance. Cars go up on sidewalks, through store windows, they skid into each other in the rain, they collide at intersections, they crash head-on on the highways. It is very farcical what cars do. The run into lampposts or hurtle off bridges. Trains derail, buckle, plow into the rear of other trains. Airplanes take off and crash, and they crash on landing. They hit other airplanes in the air, they turn on their wingtips on the runway, they skid off the runway, they miss the runway altogether. Everything disastrous that happens to people usually happens to many people at the same time. They even get sick in great numbers, as in epidemics. You would think that illness was a personal thing and a matter of individual character, but people are poisoned in great numbers by the food they eat at the same dinners, or they get cancer together from working in the same factories. There is very little that people can do disastrously by themselves. Neither crashing in airplanes nor burning to death in tenements. Most of the time, these things are done by groups of people. And of course, war is done by groups of people, and the dying in wars is comprised of enormous numbers of people. In fact, that is the meaning of dying in wars, that it be done by the greatest possible numbers of people. So it is all very painful. There’s very little dignity possible and I find that quite painful. Nevertheless, nevertheless, I choose not to be inconsolable.

GRACE I am not sure why you are telling me this but I think you are wise not to be inconsolable.

( In the ensuing laughter EDGAR distractedly takes a handgun from his breast pocket )

EDGAR Very wise. Very brave.

JOAN What is that?

CLAUDETTE Is that a gun?

JOAN Where does that come from?

CLAUDETTE Joel—

JOEL It isn’t loaded, I’m sure. Is it, Edgar? What is it, some sort of objet?

EDGAR I don’t know.

MICHAEL You’ll go to great lengths to win an argument.

EDGAR On the contrary. I didn’t know I was inconsolable until it was said. It is exactly true.

JOAN Where did you get that thing?

EDGAR I bought it. Very cheap. I didn’t know why, it just appealed to me.

( A moment of silence. The others exchange glances )

EDGAR ( Ruminatively ) I am inconsolable! Yet I don’t claim not to take pleasure where I can. I don’t claim pleasures are not possible or desirable because everything is so painful. For instance, on a beautiful day in the city people buy sandwiches and take them to the parks to eat, or they sit in one of the plazas off the streets, one of the raised plazas or parks of the banks and corporations. And they watch each other go by. That is a simple, undeniable pleasure available to everyone. It is a precise pleasure to eat one’s lunch in contentment and stare at the girls and think about them as they go by. It is nice to see the sun shine through the thin skirt of a lovely girl. When the weather is warm she may wear such a flimsy dress that you can see the sun shining through it, so that it lights her thighs. And if the sun is really strong, you can through your half-closed eyes see it shining through her dress, so that you can see her entire body, and through the flesh of her so that you can see her bones, and even through her bones so that you can see the most opaque intimate part of her, her intrauterine device.