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

Thus, in a way, this refusal to become a teacher and to earn a living was the beginning of the circle.

The other boys who truly belonged to the circle were also caught in the midst of the great depression. Edmund Kish wanted to be a teacher of philosophy, but he was unable to get an appointment. Jacob Cohen, recognized by all as the conscience or judge of the circle, wanted to be a reporter, but there were few jobs for newcomers. Ferdinand Harrap tried to be an author, but none of his stories were accepted, and he supported himself by directing a business agency. Francis French and Marcus Gross were teachers in the public high school system, although this was far from their ambition, Lloyd Tyler, known as “the boy,” was still a student, and Laura made the most money as the buyer for a department store.

The circle was astonished when Rudyard’s first long play was rejected by Broadway, for all had been certain that Rudyard would be famous and rich very soon. Rudyard had always been the one who won all the prizes in school and did everything best. Marcus Gross spoke fondly of the day, long ago and far away, when he had first encountered Rudyard in public school. It was the beginning of the new term and after the first hour Rudyard was regarded as a genius by the teacher and the pupils. So it had always been, Rudyard had been the infant prodigy, class orator, laureate, and best student. When Rudyard’s plays were refused year after year by Broadway producers the circle was perplexed, for his dramatic works seemed to them delightful and profound when he read them aloud to the circle. Edmund Kish recognized the weakness of the plays, the fact that Rudyard used character and incident merely as springboards for excursions which were lyrical and philosophical, so that the essential impression was dream-like, abstract, and didactic. But he liked the plays for just this reason, and his conversations about philosophy did much to make Rudyard concern himself with the lyrical expression of philosophical ideas.

Laura was disappointed and after a time she concealed her disappointment by speaking of her brother’s plays as just trash. Yet she was patient with Rudyard, delighting in the circle as such and hoping that among the new young men whom Rudyard was always bringing to the house there would be one who would want to marry her.

After five years of the depression, the hopes of most of the boys of the circle had faded slowly like a color or were worn thin like a cloth. Their life as part of the circle was their true life, and their lower middle class poverty kept them from seeking out girls and entertaining the idea of marriage. From time to time some of them became acquainted with girls and went out with them briefly, but since no one but Rudyard was doing what he wanted to be doing, marriage was as distant as a foreign country. Disdainful from the beginning of the conventional modes of behavior, their enjoyment of the life of the circle fortified and heightened their disdain.

When Laura began to doubt that she was going to get a husband, she began to drink, hiding the gin in the pantry when Rudyard tried to stop her. She drank on Saturday nights, the nights when the circle came to her house and was most itself, so that some of the boys spoke of “our Saturday nights.” When she was really drunken, she became quarrelsome and voluble, and what she said was an incoherent, but blunt utterance of the naked truth. The boys tried to seem indifferent to what she said, but the reason for her drunkenness was clear and painful. When the marriage of a boy or girl who had come to evenings of the circle was discussed, and when the news of an engagement became known, Laura cried out from the kitchen like Cassandra:

“What does she have that I don’t have?” Laura uttered this question again and again during the evening, amid other and like remarks.

Laura insisted in vain that her question be answered, and sometimes she placed her hands on her breasts lightly, as if in estimation, although when sober she was ashamed of any mention of sexual desire. Each newcomer or visitor renewed her hope, Laura invited him to come to dinner. Laura was full of great goodness and kindness, a goodness hardly concealed by her disgruntled and grudging remarks. She was unable to understand what was wrong. She lent the boys money and helped them in whatever they attempted, knowing that she was used by them and used most of all by Rudyard. She made petulant remarks, she said that she was a fool, but she always pressed herself forward to be helpful, typing Rudyard’s manuscripts which she declared more and more often to be just trash which she could understand less and less as Rudyard’s indulgence in lyrical philosophizing grew.

Thus on a Saturday night when the circle had long been in full being, Laura spoke loudly, crying out from the kitchen or uttering her sentences in the midst of a conversation.

“Tick, tick, tick,” she said as she carried a dish to the table for the midnight supper.

“What are you ticking about?” asked Edmund Kish, knowing very well that her answer would be an expression of unhappiness.

“O,” said Laura, “That’s just my life ticking away.”

“Can’t you stop being human for an evening?” asked Francis French, who did not like to hear of unhappiness.

“No, I can’t,” said Laura, “I never can, no matter how hard I try. I just keep thinking of the rotten truth, the dirty truth, and nothing but the awful truth.”

“We ought to remember,” said Rudyard, who was able to enjoy everything, “the profound insight stated in the sentence, ‘ Joy is our duty .’”

“I don’t feel joyous,” said Laura, “and I don’t feel like forcing myself to be joyous, whether or not it is a duty. I don’t like life, life does not like me, and I am unhappy.”

“Laura is right,” said Edmund, seeking to show sympathy, “she has a right to her feelings. When I used to get peevish as a child, I would say: ‘What should I do? I have nothing to do?’ My mother always used to have just one answer: ‘Go knock your head against the wall’ was what my mother always said. She was a big help.”

“Tick, tick, tick,” said Laura, “that’s just life passing away, second by second.”

TWO: “HOW MUCH MONEY DOES HE MAKE?”

During the week, Edmund Kish had been visited by Israel Brown, the most admired of all the teachers known to the circle. Israel Brown was a man of incomparable learning. He was lean, tall, hollow-cheeked, and Christ-like in appearance. When he conversed, he spoke with a passion and rush such that one might suppose that the end of his life or of the world were in the offing. He did not seem to belong to this world and this life, although he appeared to all to know about everything in this world. He was a teacher of philosophy, but he touched upon many other subjects, ancient coins, legal codes, marine architecture, the writing of the American Constitution and the theology of the early Church Fathers. No matter whom he met and no matter where he was, Israel Brown rushed to tell his listener whatever his listener seemed to care about. He was able to correct and contradict whatever his listener said to him without offending him. He said hurriedly: “You will pardon me if I point out—,” and then told his listener facts about the subject which the listener for the most part did not know existed, or were known to anyone.

Thus on this day when Israel Brown stopped at Edmund Kish’s house to get the compendium he had lent Edmund, one of his most devoted students, he was introduced to Edmund’s mother and he spoke to her immediately with customary pace and passion, telling her all about her generation, the generation which had come to America from Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1914. He spoke of the causes of the departure of this generation from the old world, the problems and tricks of the ocean liner agencies, the prospects of the immigrants, the images of the new world which had inhabited their minds, the shortage of labor which had drawn them, and the effect of their coming upon social and economic tensions in America.