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

Mrs. Kish listened to Israel Brown amazed as everyone was who heard him for the first time, amazed and overwhelmed by his eloquence, his learning, and his ravenous desire to tell all that he knew. Edmund as he listened was amused by the dumbfounded look upon his mother’s face. She was an intelligent woman who had been a radical in her youth and she was not wholly bound in mind by her middle-class existence.

As soon as Israel Brown departed, Mrs. Kish breathed deeply as if in relief.

“You have just seen a genius,” said Edmund to his mother.

“How much money does he make?” asked Mrs. Kish.

This was the story with which Edmund, excited, came to the Saturday evening at the Bell apartment.

He was not disappointed. The circle responded with enormous joy, and immediately Rudyard started the analysis and augmentation of any news which was a loved practice.

“Your mother’s question,” said Rudyard, in a tone in which gaiety and a pedagogic attitude were present, “is not only brilliant in itself, but it suggests an inexhaustible number of new versions. Your mother has virtually invented a new genre for the epigram. Thus, whenever anyone is praised and whenever anything favorable is said about anyone, let us reply: ‘Never mind that: how much money does he make?’”

“Yes,” said Ferdinand, “there are all kinds of versions. We can say: ‘I am not in the least interested in that. Just tell me one thing: What’s his salary?’ Or if we want to make him look unimportant: ‘What you have just told me leaves me absolutely cold. What I want to know is: What are his wages? ’ And then again ‘Precisely how much cash has he in the bank?’ ”

“‘How much is his yearly compensation?’” shouted Laura from the kitchen, preparing the midnight supper, but never failing to listen to all that was said.

“It is one of the most heart-breaking sentences of our time,” Jacob Cohen declared in a low voice, “and if it brings one to tears, the tears are obviously for Edmund’s mother and not for Israel Brown.”

“I don’t notice anyone refusing any money,” said Laura, bringing coffee, tea, and cocoa to the table, “except for Jacob.” Jacob had refused to accept an allowance from his father and he had refused a job in the family business in which his older brothers prospered exceedingly. He had explained that he was going to be what he wanted to be or he was going to be nothing.

“It is easy enough to do nothing,” said Jacob, seating himself at the dinner table. He did not like to have anyone’s attention fixed upon what, in his being, was most intimate and most important.

“The difficult virtue,” said Rudyard, “is to disregard the possibility of making money, to live such a life that making money will have no influence upon one’s mind, heart and imagination.” As he spoke, he was hardly aware that he was thinking chiefly of himself.

“You can’t write plays for money, you just don’t know how,” said Laura, “so you don’t have any temptation to resist: that’s no virtue.” Laura’s love and admiration of her brother did not prevent her from attempting to overthrow the attitudes in which Rudyard took the most pride. This was the way in which she tried to defend herself from the intensity of her love and the profundity of her acceptance of him.

Rudyard did not answer her. His mind had shifted to his own work, and he took from the shelf the manuscript book in which his last play was written, seated himself upon the studio couch, and studied his own work, a look of smiling seriousness upon his face.

The other boys were seated at the dinner table, slowly eating the midnight supper and rejoicing in Mrs. Kish’s question. Laura pampered each of them in his stubborn idiosyncrasy of taste. Edmund liked his coffee light, Rudyard liked his very strong, Ferdinand would only drink Chinese tea, Edmund insisted on toast, although most of them liked pumpernickel bread best of all. Laura provided what each of them liked best, which did not prevent her from being ironic about their preferences and assuming the appearance of one who begrudges and denies all generous indulgence and attention.

“How beautiful,” said Rudyard loudly without raising his gaze from his manuscript book, “and yet no one likes this play, not even my intimate friends. But in a generation or in fifty years, it will be cheered as the best dramatic work of the century!”

Marcus Gross strode in, his entrances being at once loud and founded on the assumption that he had been present all evening.

“The theatre in which your plays are performed,” he said, “ought to be named, Posterity. ”

“Very good,” said Rudyard, “you may think that you are attacking me, but I regard that as one of the finest things ever said about an author!”

It was felt that this was a perfect reply.

Between Rudyard and Marcus an antagonism had long existed, excited for the most part by Rudyard’s open contempt for Marcus, who admired Rudyard very much, but was forced to conceal his admiration.

“You are absolutely safe,” said Marcus, responding to the laughter, “you are taking no risk whatever. We will all be dead before anyone knows if you are right or wrong.”

“I know now,” said Rudyard serenely, never admitting the small doubts which on occasion overtook him and suppressing his anguish at not being recognized as a great playwright.

“The fact is,” said Jacob half-aloud, thinking of the life which they lived, “we do not have very much of a choice. It is a question of your money or your life, the Mexican bandit’s question. We have a choice between doing what we don’t want to do or doing nothing.”

“Last week,” said Lloyd Tyler, the boy of the circle, and the most silent one, “my father bought his yearly ticket in the Irish Sweepstakes, and it all began again, just the same as every other year.”

He told them of the new dialogue between his parents, discussing the Irish Sweepstakes.

“What would you do, if you won one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?” Mrs. Tyler had asked her husband. The cruelest irony was in her voice, for she resented her husband very much because her life had not been what she had expected it to be. What she was saying was that he would not know what to do with a great deal of money.

“What would you do with it?” she said again for emphasis, disturbing Mr. Tyler’s careful examination of the evening newspaper.

“I would sleep,” said Mr. Tyler flatly and strongly, for he recognized this as a criticism of his powers and his way of life.

“But you sleep now,” said Mrs. Tyler, unwilling to be put off, “I never saw anyone sleep as much as that man,” she said to Lloyd who was trying to keep out of an interchange in which he recognized twenty-five years of feeling.

“It would be a different sleep,” said Mr. Tyler. “If I had one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, it would not be the same kind of sleep.”

“No one sleeps better than you do,” said Mrs. Tyler, but weakly, knowing that she had been worsted.

“What a triumph!” cried Edmund joyously. “Not even Swift would have made a better answer.”

“Yes,” said Rudyard, “we ought to strike a medal for your father, Lloyd. He has justified all of us.”

“I wonder what he would do with one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Marcus.

“He would sleep the sleep of the just and the self-fulfilled,”

Jacob answered. “What does he have to show for his thirty years of work? He has nothing.”

“He has himself,” said Rudyard, who often chose to regard all things in an ideal light.

“He does not like himself,” said Lloyd, “he does not care very much for himself.”