Edgar Doctorow - Drinks Before Dinner

CLAUDETTE Then what is it you want from us? If we are so hopeless, what do you expect from us? If we are so lost, why do you stay among us? Why do you come here and terrorize us?

( One of the children comforts CLAUDETTE. JOEL, in turn, calms her )

JOEL Edgar, you claim to want us cooperatively to decide what is happening here. But the opinions of the person who holds the gun have, somehow, more amplification than the opinions of the rest of us. What shall we do about that? I would not want to call you a hypocrite. I would not want to suggest that it is an act of fraud for you to encourage us to determine altogether what is to happen.

CLAUDETTE Yes, you didn’t ask our permission to bring a gun here. We didn’t share that decision. We didn’t know you had it and we didn’t agree that you should have it or agree that you should bring it into this house. Yet you came here with it. And you knew you were going to pull it.

EDGAR No, I had no idea! In fact, I had almost forgotten I was carrying it until Joel perceived I was inconsolable. I am grateful to him for that. Perhaps it is wrong to expect you to share the feeling of inconsolability. Perhaps it exists because it cannot be shared!

( Silence )

ANDREA I have a confession. I did not tell in my story of the poet selling his poems in the street that I bought several of them. That is because they were mostly very bad poems. Only one was good and that was a plagiarism of Walt Whitman. I think it is important to clear that up. That is part of the story too. It is important that we all know all of the story that any of us tells. I edited my story for the sake of romance. I wanted Edgar to find someone from the crowd who distinguished himself in his enterprise. But of course the truth is that in our country, where the practice of poetry pays so little, there are enormous numbers of poets. In our country, where the practice of poetry is thought to be impractical and eccentric, there are astronomical numbers of poets! And they are all standing on street corners selling their poems or standing in country roads and writing their poems. They are all standing looking at the ground under their feet or at the sky over their head and making up poems about what is on the ground and what is in the sky. We may be unaware of their great numbers because they are forced to live among us as we live among ourselves, as workers and people without work, as patients in hospitals, as betrayed lovers and born and dying persons, but not as poets. And that’s the way they live too. There may be almost as many poets in our country as there are cars. They are manufactured somewhere, perhaps in the English departments of universities. And so they are everywhere. Every town in the United States has its poet, just as you always find a Chinese restaurant wherever you happen to be. I think if every Chinese restaurant in the country had a poet inside, you would see how many poets there are. In fact, most of the restaurants would have to have several poets inside. Some of the poets would have to cook and some of them would have to dine. Some of them would stand behind the glass case containing the lichee nuts. And as time went on, there would be more poets than the Chinese restaurants would know what to do with, and poets would be waiting on lines outside the doors and down the streets.

( In the last few moments of this speech ANDREA begins to laugh. But it is the kind of laughter that turns almost immediately to tears )

EDGAR But why are you crying?

ANDREA Because it is enough to make me cry but not enough to make me hold a gun.

EDGAR Oh, Andrea, don’t ask me to put down this gun. I find my hand wants to hold it. Is it possible the body makes the decision and the mind only understands it subsequently? That’s how reflexes work, after all. The body does something and the mind recognizes what it has done. Perhaps the mind is only the body announcing what it has already done. When it’s born it cries to announce it was born. When it’s older it kills and announces it was angry. Do you think, do any of you think I would hurt you, that I wouldn’t destroy myself a thousand times before bringing harm to you or the children? But something has begun that has to be allowed to happen. So Andrea, if you must cry, I must hold the gun. I’ll hold it for all of us.

( Pause )

MICHAEL I remember years ago a man running on the beach, a middle-aged man running alone at low tide. He was the first one I ever noticed. The runners those days ran alone. They ran on the beaches, or they ran on the tracks behind the universities. Today there are so many runners that they go in packs. And they are dressed to run. They’re dressed in shoes that have been manufactured for them and sweatsuits and shorts and headbands manufactured for them. They run in the city along the river and they run in the streets of the suburbs. They run along the edges of highways past the gas stations and fast-food places. They run along the highways to enlarge their lungs and breathing capacities, to make their hearts strong and muscles firm, but I don’t know why, because the cars get the air first, they can’t run past the cars, and what is making their lungs large and hearts strong is pure lead and carbon monoxide. Still, they run and there are more of them than ever. Not only white middle-aged men, but boys and girls and older people and black people and most of all women. A lot of the runners are women. They do not appear as women, they appear as runners. Even when they’re attractive, they’re attractive as runners rather than as women But as I say, they are all running. And I wonder, What is it their bodies have decided that their minds have yet to announce? Perhaps it is their secret acceptance of the need to train for what is going to happen. Perhaps the runners training along all the roads of the country, training on the trails of our national parks and down the main streets of small towns and in parks in our cities and in traffic packs on the highways are the unconscious training of the nation for the terrible thing to come. When this terrible thing comes, our runners hope to outrun it. I see no other reason to run along the highways and breathe car exhaust. They are learning not only to have strong hearts and limbs and large lungs, they are learning the directions in which to run, they are learning the routes, it is very interesting. But of course, if you talk to runners, they all tell you how much better they feel since they began to run. They’ll not admit to be training for the time that will come when it is time to get away from whatever it is that is coming. They will not admit it, perhaps because their minds do not yet know it. And each day their number increases because more and more people want to be ready for the time when there is nothing left but to run, when nothing else will avail but to run, and they do not want to be among those who cannot run or who falter and stumble and collapse from the attempt to run. They do not want that. They intend to be able to run. Their bodies are in training but their minds haven’t made the announcement. When will they make the announcement? I have no idea why they haven’t already made the announcement.

( The sound of the doorbell )

JOEL There is our guest of honor.

( The little GIRL cries out . EDGAR drops down on his knees before her )

EDGAR What? What is the matter? What do you think is going to happen?

GIRL The end of the world!

Curtain

( A few minutes later. Everyone onstage, as in Act One. But the guest of honor , ALAN, sits tied to a straight-back chair . EDGAR holds the gun .)

EDGAR Speaking for all of us, Mr. Secretary, I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to meet you, to have you here among us, in this very room, and to have experienced the almost mystical moment of your arrival just as the idea came over us that the world is coming to an end. You can imagine how we look forward to the views on this subject of our greatest statesman.