A safe for memory, a giant glass
To drink each dear,
Wit, learning, and a deck of cards
Stacked by the will,
The genuine she to whom your shameless he
Is me and me,
Double-delighting in a box which is
A tender sea—
None of these things are given. But you get
What you do not want, what you do not need,
Do not expect, or do not recognize—
Strength to be patient, naiveté to hope,
Perplexed affection, inexhaustible will,
Brief visits from the dead, and love unwanted,
Too much, too little, overwhelming all.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the emptiness
Which you know well, which is unbearable,
A boredom which no man escapes unless
An animal need preempts and but defers
The question all must face, which I have faced:
What is this life? What can man ask to have?
I know the answer, I have known enough
To leap, jump, jig, and somersault until
Absurdity itself is searched
For Who Knows Him, the dream behind the dream.
I come, I say, having understood in part
The formless vacancy between the stars,
The marvelous light in which all things move and seem,
And the Santa Claus of the obsessed, obscene heart.
[The living room of the Bergen apartment in the year 1920. French windows at the back are half-open, showing the terrace, which has a wide parapet. It is an afternoon in October. Enter ANTHONY NORMAN, fiancé of Eleanor Bergen, who killed herself three months before. He walks to the mantelpiece, gazes at the photograph of Eleanor which stands there.]
ANTHONY:
This is the house of the dead, this is the house
Perplexed by a girl who killed herself.
In the morning when they came to wake her
The time to dress herself, prepare her face,
Eat breakfast, and seek the day’s interests,
Had been evaded utterly by her;
Also my will, which I had given her.
— Here they construct a system to make their lives
Self-regarding, self-gratifying, self-conscious,
Indulging their minds in the old foolishness,
The vain vanity: to correct the heart of man,
A mission, a justification, a declaration.
— The true motive is private unhappiness.
But they cannot forget the girl who killed herself,
Though they seek to see in her death a deliberate witness,
As I seek to see in her death my own grave fault,
My weakness, my failure, having offered explicitly
My face, my heart, my will. The I beneath
My quivering eyes cannot support
Her utter rejection of my life, my face, my heart;
I cannot endure myself until I know
Why she turned from me, seeking nothingness.
I must come here again and again to stare
At her parents, her bedroom, her photograph,
While they make of her death their myth and mystery.
The love whose answer was the wish to die
Gasps in a vacuum, seeks the fading face,
Fading and flickering in memory’s cinema.
One million times a single question drags
Its incompleteness, its unfinishedness
Through the unending corridors of unconsciousness.
Why did she kill herself? The photograph
Shows only the look for the photographer.
[Exit ANTHONY, as MRS. BERGEN and DR. NEWMAN enter, MRS. BERGEN nodding to ANTHONY.]
MRS. BERGEN: Please smoke if you care to do so, Dr. Newman. There are cigarettes next to you.
DR. NEWMAN: Thank you, Mrs. Bergen. Suppose you tell me all that concerns you and exactly what you think I can do.
MRS. BERGEN: Dr. Newman, it was only after I had tried every other alternative that I decided to speak to you. If I were not desperate, I would not discuss these matters with anyone not of the family; but God only knows what will happen to us next, and my sister Emma has been urging me to speak to you for a long time.
DR. NEWMAN: I understand perfectly, Mrs. Bergen. You can be sure that no one else will hear of your family troubles. But on the other hand, I should remind you that complete frankness is necessary from you, even though you are not the patient. Only the full truth can enable me to do any good, and yet I have never had a patient who from the start hid nothing.
MRS. BERGEN: I will try to be the exception. As you know, my eldest child, Eleanor, killed herself, or seemed to do so, three months ago. She had taken too many sleeping powders. That is why we are not sure that it was a deliberate act. No one knows her reason for killing herself, although my husband, for reasons of his own, says that he does know. She seemed to be happy enough, although always an over-emotional girl. But we knew little of what she did during the past few years. She insisted, as she would say, on leading her own life. She wrote verse, she studied dancing, she studied for the theatre, she had many friends whom we did not know, she went from one interest to another, and although we were anxious about her moods and her unrest, her habits seemed typical of the girls of today. When she became engaged, I thought all my anxiety was over. And then, a few weeks before her marriage, she killed herself—
DR. NEWMAN: Perhaps before you go on to speak of your husband, I had better say now that I knew your daughter well, and intended to visit you, after she died, but hesitated for various reasons.
MRS. BERGEN [surprised]: You knew Eleanor? Was she a patient of yours?
DR. NEWMAN: Yes, she was. But I think we had better speak of that later. Now tell me about your husband.
MRS. BERGEN: A year ago, after a year of despondency, Dr. Bergen began his religious society, which has brought us so much trouble, and now I am afraid, Dr. Newman, that everything is becoming worse. My son Titus and I refuse to accept Dr. Bergen’s ideas and practices, and he considers that we are betraying him. We interfere only when he tries to do such things as giving away immense sums of money to his disciples, who are in the house night and day, and whom he supports. There are eight and my youngest child, Martha, and at least two of them are obviously after my husband’s money, which is to be used for various projects having to do with my husband’s religion. I am sure, however, that some of the others are quite sincere. [A short pause.]
Dr. Newman, I love my husband dearly. He is a kind and good man, and in the past we were very content. I am horrified when I think of attempting to have him declared legally insane and shut up in an asylum, but I will have no other recourse, there is so much conflict, so much money is being thrown away. Worst of all, my daughter’s death is taken as a great example by my husband who says that she killed herself in obedience to his doctrines, his imperatives, as he calls them, so that I am afraid that another one will kill himself.
DR. NEWMAN: What are these doctrines of your husband?
MRS. BERGEN: Perhaps it would be best if you found out from him. However, the main belief is that God’s blue eye is the sky. It is God’s organ of perception, he says, and he thinks that when the whole world can be brought to an awareness of this fact, then human life will be transformed and such horrors as wars and the oppression of the poor will cease.
DR. NEWMAN: I do not understand. Why will a belief that God regards human life do away with evil? Most religions have said that the deity knows all things at all times.
MRS. BERGEN: My husband thinks that he has found the true medium by which the deity acts and moves nature and human life. He thinks that other previous religions had only an abstract idea of the divine will, but he has found the direct experience. You must look at God’s blue eye, he says, then you will know what is good and what is evil. He calls this the intuitive understanding or inspiration. But it is all very complex. Perhaps I do not understand him. He says I do not, and that it is the evil of my nature which prevents me from understanding and believing.