Long Day's Journey into Night (Yale Nota Bene) (18 page)

He sees his father staring at him with mingled worry and irritated disapproval. He grins mockingly.

Don’t look at me as if I’d gone nutty. I’m talking sense. Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it? It’s the three Gorgons in one. You look in their faces and turn to stone. Or it’s Pan. You see him and you die—that is, inside you—and have to go on living as a ghost.

Impressed and at the same time revolted.

You have a poet in you but it’s a damned morbid one!

Forcing a smile.

Devil take your pessimism. I feel low-spirited enough.

He sighs.

Why can’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. You’ll find what you’re trying to say in him—as you’ll find everything else worth saying.

He quotes, using his fine voice.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

Ironically.

Fine! That’s beautiful. But I wasn’t trying to say that. We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let’s drink up and forget it. That’s more my idea.

Disgustedly.

Ach! Keep such sentiments to yourself. I shouldn’t have given you that drink.

It did pack a wallop, all right. On you, too.

He grins with affectionate teasing.

Even if you’ve never missed a performance!

Aggressively.

Well, what’s wrong with being drunk? It’s what we’re after, isn’t it? Let’s not kid each other, Papa. Not tonight. We know what we’re trying to forget.

Hurriedly.

But let’s not talk about it. It’s no use now.

Dully.

No. All we can do is try to be resigned—again.

Or be so drunk you can forget.

He recites, and recites well, with bitter, ironical passion, the Symons’ translation of Baudelaire’s prose poem.

“Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: ‘It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.’”

He grins at his father provocatively.

Thickly humorous.

I wouldn’t worry about the virtue part of it, if I were you.

Then disgustedly.

Pah! It’s morbid nonsense! What little truth is in it you’ll find nobly said in Shakespeare.

Then appreciatively.

But you recited it well, lad. Who wrote it?

Baudelaire.

Never heard of him.

Grins provocatively.

He also wrote a poem about Jamie and the Great White Way.

That loafer! I hope to God he misses the last car and has to stay uptown!

Goes on, ignoring this.

Although he was French and never saw Broadway and died before Jamie was born. He knew him and Little Old New York just the same.

He recites the Symons’ translation of Baudelaire’s “Epilogue.”

“With heart at rest I climbed the citadel’s
Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower,
Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,

Where evil comes up softly like a flower.
Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,
Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;

But like an old sad faithful lecher, fain
To drink delight of that enormous trull
Whose hellish beauty makes me young again.

Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapours full,
Sodden with day, or, new apparelled, stand
In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,

I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and
Hunted have pleasures of their own to give,
The vulgar herd can never understand.”

With irritable disgust.

Morbid filth! Where the hell do you get your taste in literature? Filth and despair and pessimism! Another atheist, I suppose. When you deny God, you deny hope. That’s the trouble with you. If you’d get down on your knees—

As if he hadn’t heard—sardonically.

It’s a good likeness of Jamie, don’t you think, hunted by himself and whiskey, hiding in a Broadway hotel room with some fat tart— he likes them fat—reciting Dowson’s Cynara to her.

He recites derisively, but with deep feeling.

“All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.”

Jeeringly.

And the poor fat burlesque queen doesn’t get a word of it, but suspects she’s being insulted! And Jamie never loved any Cynara, and was never faithful to a woman in his life, even in his fashion! But he lies there, kidding himself he is superior and enjoys pleasures “the vulgar herd can never understand”!

He laughs.

It’s nuts—completely nuts!

Vaguely—his voice thick.

It’s madness, yes. If you’d get on your knees and pray. When you deny God, you deny sanity.

Ignoring this.

But who am I to feel superior? I’ve done the same damned thing. And it’s no more crazy than Dowson himself, inspired by an absinthe hangover, writing it to a dumb barmaid, who thought he was a poor crazy souse, and gave him the gate to marry a waiter!

He laughs—then soberly, with genuine sympathy.

Poor Dowson. Booze and consumption got him.

He starts and for a second looks miserable and frightened. Then with defensive irony.

Perhaps it would be tactful of me to change the subject.

Thickly.

Where you get your taste in authors— That damned library of yours!

He indicates the small bookcase at rear.

Voltaire, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen! Atheists, fools, and madmen! And your poets! This Dowson, and this Baudelaire, and Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, and Whitman and Poe! Whoremongers and degenerates! Pah! When I’ve three good sets of Shakespeare there
(he nods at the large bookcase)
you could read.

Provocatively.

They say he was a souse, too.

They lie! I don’t doubt he liked his glass—it’s a good man’s failing—but he knew how to drink so it didn’t poison his brain with morbidness and filth. Don’t compare him with the pack you’ve got in there.

He indicates the small bookcase again.

Your dirty Zola! And your Dante Gabriel Rossetti who was a dope fiend!

He starts and looks guilty.

With defensive dryness.

Perhaps it would be wise to change the subject.

A pause.

You can’t accuse me of not knowing Shakespeare. Didn’t I win five dollars from you once when you bet me I couldn’t learn a leading part of his in a week, as you used to do in stock in the old days. I learned Macbeth and recited it letter perfect, with you giving me the cues.

Approvingly.

That’s true. So you did.

He smiles teasingly and sighs.

It was a terrible ordeal, I remember, hearing you murder the lines. I kept wishing I’d paid over the bet without making you prove it.

He chuckles and Edmund grins. Then he starts as he hears a sound from upstairs—with dread.

Did you hear? She’s moving around. I was hoping she’d gone to sleep.

Forget it! How about another drink?

He reaches out and gets the bottle, pours a drink and hands it back. Then with a strained casualness, as his father pours a drink.

When did Mama go to bed?

Right after you left. She wouldn’t eat any dinner. What made you run away?

Nothing.

Abruptly raising his glass.

Well, here’s how.

Mechanically.

Drink hearty, lad.

They drink. Tyrone again listens to sounds upstairs—with dread.

She’s moving around a lot. I hope to God she doesn’t come down.

Dully.

Yes. She’ll be nothing but a ghost haunting the past by this time.

He pauses—then miserably.

Back before I was born—

Doesn’t she do the same with me? Back before she ever knew me. You’d think the only happy days she’s ever known were in her father’s home, or at the Convent, praying and playing the piano.

Jealous resentment in his bitterness.

As I’ve told you before, you must take her memories with a grain of salt. Her wonderful home was ordinary enough. Her father wasn’t the great, generous, noble Irish gentleman she makes out. He was a nice enough man, good company and a good talker. I liked him and he liked me. He was prosperous enough, too, in his wholesale grocery business, an able man. But he had his weakness. She condemns my drinking but she forgets his. It’s true he never touched a drop till he was forty, but after that he made up for lost time. He became a steady champagne drinker, the worst kind. That was his grand pose, to drink only champagne. Well, it finished him quick— that and the consumption—

He stops with a guilty glance at his son.

Sardonically.

We don’t seem able to avoid unpleasant topics, do we?

Sighs sadly.

No.

Then with apathetic attempt at heartiness.

What do you say to a game or two of Casino, lad?

All right.

Shuffling the cards clumsily.

We can’t lock up and go to bed till Jamie comes on the last trolley— which I hope he won’t—and I don’t want to go upstairs, anyway, till she’s asleep.

Neither do I.

Keeps shuffling the cards fumblingly, forgetting to deal them.

As I was saying, you must take her tales of the past with a grain of salt. The piano playing and her dream of becoming a concert pianist. That was put in her head by the nuns flattering her. She was their pet. They loved her for being so devout. They’re innocent women, anyway, when it comes to the world. They don’t know that not one in a million who shows promise ever rises to concert playing. Not that your mother didn’t play well for a schoolgirl, but that’s no reason to take it for granted she could have—

Sharply.

Why don’t you deal, if we’re going to play.

Eh? I am.

Dealing with very uncertain judgment of distance.

And the idea she might have become a nun. That’s the worst. Your mother was one of the most beautiful girls you could ever see. She knew it, too. She was a bit of a rogue and a coquette, God bless her, behind all her shyness and blushes. She was never made to renounce the world. She was bursting with health and high spirits and the love of loving.

For God’s sake, Papa! Why don’t you pick up your hand?

Picks it up—dully.

Yes, let’s see what I have here.

They both stare at their cards unseeingly. Then they both start. Tyrone whispers.

Listen!

She’s coming downstairs.