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

MRS. GOLDMARK: Maybe he wants to speak to your husband too. Where is your husband now?

ELSIE FISH: How should I know where my husband is? Who am I to know such a thing?

SHENANDOAH[ standing at an angle to the scene, unseen and unheard ]:

This marriage is a stupid endless mistake,

Unhappiness flares from it, day and night,

The child has been desired four long years,

For friends have told the young married woman

The child will change his father, alter herimage

Both in his mind and heart. For he is cruel.

How can two egos live near by all their days,

If Love and Love’s unnatural forgiveness

Do not give to the body’s selfishness

And the will’s cruelty lifelong carte blanche ?

[ A doorbell rings. The negro SERVANT GIRL passes from the kitchen at the left through doorway in back of dining room which leads to the hall. ]

ELSIE FISH: That must be my father-in-law now. Since he has come about something very important, would you go now, Mrs. Goldmark, and come back when he has gone? You have been a wonderful neighbor.

MRS. GOLDMARK [ departing ]: I have had two children myself. I know what it is to be a mother for the first time.

[ Enter JACOB FISH, a man of sixty .]

JACOB FISH [ plainly preoccupied ]: Dear Elsie, I was very anxious to see you before the ceremony. So this is my new grandson: what a fine boy! May he live to a hundred and ten!

SHENANDOAH:

God save me from such wishes, though well meant:

This old man has not read Ecclesiastes

Or Sophocles. Yet he has lived for sixty years,

He should know better what long life avails,

The best seats at the funerals of friends.

JACOB FISH: My dear girl, last night I heard that you were going to name the boy Jacob, after your dead father. Have you forgotten that Jacob is my name also? Have you forgotten what it means to have a child named after you, when you are still living?

ELSIE FISH: What is it, except an honor? An honor to you, father-in-law, as well as to my dear dead father, although I admit I had him in mind first of all.

JACOB FISH: Elsie, I do not blame you for not knowing the beliefs of your religion and your people. You are only a woman, and in this great new America, anyone might forget everything but such wonderful things like tall buildings, subways, automobiles, and iceboxes. But if the child is named Jacob, it will be my death warrant! Thus all the learned ministers have said. It is written again and again in various commentaries and interpretations of the Law. It has been believed for thousands of years.

SHENANDOAH:

How powerful the past! O king of kings,

King of the elements,

king of all thinking things!

ELSIE FISH: I am surprised that you accept such beliefs, father-in-law. I never thought that you were especially religious.

JACOB FISH: Wisdom comes with the years, my dear girl. When you are my age, you will feel as I do about these matters.

SHENANDOAH:

This old man is afraid of death, though life

Has long been cruel as jealousy to him.

How often death presides when birth occurs:

Yet to disturb the naming of a child

Is wrong,

though many would behave like this—

O to what difficult and painful feat

Shall I compare the birth of any child

And all related problems? To the descent

Of a small grand piano from a window

On the fifth-floor: O what a tour de force ,

Clumsy as hippos or rich men en route

To Heaven through the famous needle’s eye!

Such is our début in the turning world….

ELSIE FISH: How can I change the child’s name now? Some of the presents already have his initials and his name has been announced on very expensive engraved cards. What will I say to my mother, my father’s widow? This is her first grandchild. Do you really think a name will make you die?

JACOB FISH: Elsie, look at the problem from this point of view: why take a chance? If I die, think of how you will feel. There are hundreds of names which are very handsome.

ELSIE FISH: Father-in-law, you know I would like to please you.

JACOB FISH: You are a good woman, Elsie. You are too good for my son. He does not deserve such a fine wife.

ELSIE FISH: You do not know how he behaves to me. You would not believe me, if I told you. I have not had a happy day in the four years of my marriage.

JACOB FISH: I know, I know! He ran away from home as a boy and has never listened to anyone. I tell him every time I see him that he does not deserve such a wife, so intelligent, so good-looking, so kind and refined!

ELSIE FISH: I will do what you ask me to do. I will change the child’s name. Jacob is not a fine name, anyhow. I want the boy to have an unusual name because he is going to be an unusual boy.

[ The BABY begins to howl, in a formalized way which does not get in the way of the dialogue, but seems a comment on it. ]

You understand, I would not do this for anyone but you.

JACOB FISH: I will be grateful to you to my dying day!

ELSIE FISH: You have many years of life ahead of you!

JACOB FISH: You are a wonderful woman!

[ In this dialogue, the shift back and forth between formalized and colloquial speech becomes especially pronounced. ELSIE FISH hands the child to SHENANDOAH, as if absentmindedly, and leaves the dining room to go to the door with her father-in-law. ]

SHENANDOAH:

She thinks to please her husband through his father.

Do not suppose this flattery too gross:

If it were smiled at any one of you

You would not mind! You might not recognize

The flattery as such. And if you did,

You would not mind! Such falseness is too pleasant:

Each ego hides a half-belief the best is true,

Good luck and sympathy are all it lacks

To make the bright lights shine upon its goodness,

Its kindness, shyness, talent, wit, and charm!

— In any case, what can she do? Fight Death,

The great opponent ever undefeated

Except perhaps by Mozart?

As for belief,

To make a man give up but one belief

Is just like pulling teeth from a lion’s mouth—

[SHENANDOAH turns his attention to the child in his arms, regards the child with lifted eyebrows and a doubtful smile. As he does so, the spotlight falls on him, while the scene is left in a half-light. ]

Poor child, the center of this sinful earth,

How many world-wide powers surround you now,

Making your tears appropriate to more

Than the un-understood need and disorder

Your body feels. True and appropriate

Your sobs and tears, because you hardly know

How many world-wide powers surround you now,

And what a vicious fate prepares itself

To make of you an alien and a freak!

— I too am right to sympathize with you,

If I do not, who will? for I am bound

By the sick pity and the faithful love

The ego bears itself, as if Narcissus

And Romeo were one: for I am you

By that identity which fights through time,

No matter what Kant and other skeptics say

— Is it not true that every first-born child

Is looked on by his relatives as if

They were the Magi, seeking Zion’s promise?

At any rate, children for long have been

The prizes and angels of the West,

But what this signifies let us omit

— Now in the great city, mid-winter holds,

The dirty rags of snow freeze at the curb,

Pneumonia sucks at breath, the turning globe

Brings to the bitter air and the grey sky

The long illness of time and history,

And in the wide world Woodrow Wilson does