Delmore Schwartz - Once and for All - The Best of Delmore Schwartz

DR. NEWMAN [ as if concerned with other thoughts ]: There are a hundred other religions, a thousand more systems of belief, all of them asserting that they have the true path to the divine.

DR. BERGEN [ smiling with assurance ]: All of them fail in one thing, they have not attained knowledge of what mediates between the divine and the human, the infinite and the finite, which is the chief religious problem. Some have had direct experience of that mediator, which accounts for their frequent truths. But none have recognized fully nor correctly named the actual fact which mediates between God and man. I know I am right because I have direct experiences of what I assert, the only means of arriving at certainty.

DR. NEWMAN: Dr. Bergen, I am full of misgivings about what I now must do. I have delayed this interview with you for weeks, fearing the consequences of what I am about to tell you. But worse may come if I do not speak.

You believe that your daughter Eleanor killed herself because of one of your doctrines. You think that she believed as you do, and you say that intuition has made you certain that she killed herself, accepting your doctrine. You are wrong. She killed herself for a wholly different reason. She was in love with a man who would not marry her, partly because he was already married. Though he loved your daughter, he would not divorce his wife for her. He brought her to me, hoping that an analysis might free her from her obsessive passion for him. It did not, unfortunately, although we tried for more than a year. She became desperate because he had refused to see her for almost three months, and she killed herself when she was convinced that he would never marry her. Her predicament was almost commonplace in modern life. Only her means of adjusting herself was extraordinary, and that is accounted for by her inability to control her emotions, such an emotion of despondency as is clear in the victrola record you played. She killed herself because she was in love with a married man.

DR. BERGEN [ shocked and at a loss ]: You are lying! How can you prove what you say? It is what you wish to believe, not the truth. Whether consciously or not, you lie.

DR. NEWMAN: I have conclusive proof, the kind which you do not possess for your fantastic belief. It is a letter from your daughter written and posted an hour before she killed herself. You will see why I hesitated so long before coming to you, though I knew that her death was a mystery. By the time this letter was written, I was the only one in whom she would or could confide. The point is that despite your intimacy with God’s blue eye, you wholly misconstrued her act. [ He reads the letter. ]

“Dear Dr. Newman:

You have been so kind to me that I don’t like to use you for an unpleasant task, but M. (her lover’s name) destroys all letters from me. I am killing myself because I cannot live without him. I want him to know that in his heart, but without any scandal which will hurt his wife and children, and he will not know this unless you tell him because I am trying to be good and useful for something for once by letting my poor father suppose that I am killing myself in obedience to his religious belief, of which you will hear more from others. Please forgive me and do this for me — tell M. that he was wrong to let anything stand in the way of love.

Your poor friend,

Eleanor.”

DR. BERGEN [ desperately ]: Is that your sister’s handwriting, Martha? [DR. NEWMAN gives MARTHA the letter. She looks at it and reads it. ]

MARTHA [ after a moment, in a strange tone ]: O Father! Yes — it is her handwriting. He read the letter correctly.

DR. BERGEN [ as if completely humbled ]: Agh! I have shown myself a deluded fool, I suppose. I have been taken in by my own fraud, it seems. It seems that I deceived myself and I deceived all of you. No! It is inconceivable to me.

DR. NEWMAN: The whole thing will pass from your mind quickly. In a few months it will be merely a bad dream, or something about which you smile. Perhaps I should have broken the true story to you differently, in gradual stages.

MRS. BERGEN [ going over to her husband, who holds his face in his hands ]: This has separated us for a long time. It is probably for the best that this should have happened. It may be that her death has saved us from unending hatred for one another.

DR. BERGEN: No, I was sure. It was no illusion.

ANTHONY:

What of myself and my illusion,

Who loved her very much in perfect blindness?

I loved a phantom which my infatuation

Engendered. She was, it seems, a dream

Foisted upon me by my fatuous mind,

While in my sleep I walked near an abyss

Upon the 57th story window ledge,

Teetering on tiptoe.

Belief contrives

A curious house, peculiar pyramid

Which narrows as it must to nothingness.

And on that tiny top we stand until

The actual sand shifts as it must, betrays

The desert of our lives, our broken sleep.

All right, let it be so. The worst has come.

I to the common world must pass

Who lived long privately. O worst of all,

I was not insufficient, but I was

Merely irrelevant to her being and her pain.

DR. BERGEN [ as if decided ]: That does not apply to me. I did not deceive, I was not deceived, except by one poor miserable distraught girl. One example proves nothing. She deceived me. But I was not deceived in all, only in her.

[ He steps quickly from the long table on the terrace to the parapet, lifting himself upon it clumsily and standing up to full height before them, as all move toward him in a ring, uttering their dismay variously. ]

Now I am going to kill myself! If you come closer, it will serve no purpose, except to make me jump sooner. I wish to make several idle remarks before I depart. If you wish to hear them, you will keep your distance. I am decided. There is nothing you can do to prevent me.

MARTHA: Father! Father!

MRS. BERGEN [ hysterical ]: For God’s sake, for our sake, don’t kill yourself. Wait! Wait! You said that one example proves nothing. You said so. You have no reason for killing yourself.

DR. BERGEN: Every reason. I wish to be sure once and for all. I cannot endure the long experience of doubt once more. Will you listen to me and hear what I have to say?

DR. NEWMAN: Wait! Do not increase the tragedy in this house. Time takes away both good and bad. In three months all will seem different to you. It will always be possible for you to die.

VARIOUS DISCIPLES [ successively ]: We need you! We depend on you! We are lost without you! We believe in you! You taught us!

DR. BERGEN: It is too late, there is only one act left for me. The horror of doubt crowds my mind and I cannot endure it. [ Turning and looking down .] Will you listen to me? On the tiny street fifteen stories below the tiny figures of human beings and of cars move with sharp, short motions, quickly, neatly, and wholly without meaning. I am going the shortest distance past them, which will at least convince you of my sincerity.

MARTHA: Father, wait!

DR. BERGEN: This is what terrorizes you, a human being about to die of his own will.

DR. NEWMAN: If you kill yourself now, they will say that you are insane.

DR. BERGEN: I am not concerned about what will be said any longer. I am going to perfect certainty. I am going to find out for myself. Let me say what I have to say. [ To MRS. BERGEN] Elsa, I am sorry. You do not understand, but I do not blame you. You were good to me for a long time, not lately; but my gratitude remains. [ To MARTHA] Martha, be a good girl, be satisfied with what life itself provides, although it is insufficient. Do not imitate your father. [ To the DISCIPLES] I can no longer help you, but you will know that I am sincere, and you will surely know once and for all at some time if I was right. I can not tolerate the mere possibility that I have suffered from some dream or hallucination.