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
What he can do. In the wide world, alas!
The World War grows in nations and in hearts,
Bringing ten million souls an early death!
— Forgive my speech: I have nor youth nor age,
But as it were an after-dinner speech,
Speaking of both, with endless platitudes—
[The spotlight goes out, the scene is once more fully lighted, ELSIE FISH returns to the dining room with MRS. GOLDMARK, SHENANDOAH gives the child back to his mother, who acts as if he were not there, and then SHENANDOAH returns to his position at the side, removed from the scene and at an angle to both audience and scene.]
ELSIE FISH: I felt for the old man and you know how I am: I always give in to my sympathies. I know it is a weakness. But what a shame that he should let such beliefs make him afraid.
MRS. GOLDMARK: When one is old, one is like a child.
ELSIE FISH: And after all, I said to myself, he is a poor unhappy old man who came to America because his children had come. His wife abuses him because he does not work and his grown-up children support him, but give the mother the money, so that he has to come to his wife for a dollar.
MRS. GOLDMARK: That’s the way it is, that’s old age for you.
ELSIE FISH: But now I must find a new name for my boy before the guests come. My husband’s relatives are coming and some of the men who work for my husband, with their wives. Mrs. Goldmark, you gave your children such fine names, maybe you can think of a name for me.
MRS. GOLDMARK: Thank you for the compliment. I like the names Herbert and Mortimer more all the time. They are so distinguished and new and American. Do you know how I came to think of them? I was reading the newspaper in bed after my first boy was born. I was reading the society page, which is always so interesting.
ELSIE FISH: Let’s get the morning paper and we will see what luck I have. I wish my husband were here, I must have his approval. He gets angry so quickly.
[MRS. GOLDMARK goes into the living room at the right and returns with the newspaper.]
ELSIE FISH [to herself]: I wonder where Walter is.
MRS. GOLDMARK: Now let us see what names are mentioned today.
SHENANDOAH:
While they gaze at their glamorous ruling class,
I must stand here, regardant at an angle,
I must lie there, quite helpless in my cradle,
As passive as a man who takes a haircut—
And yet how many minds believe a man
Creates his life ex nihilo, and laugh