free-verse227 lines

Dialogue At Perko's

by Edgar Lee Masters

Look here, Jack:

You don't act natural. You have lost your laugh.

You haven't told me any stories. You

Just lie there half asleep. What's on your mind?

JACK

What time is it? Where is my watch?

FLORENCE

Your watch

Under your pillow! You don't think I'd take it.

Why, Jack, what talk for you.

JACK

Well, never mind,

Let's pack no ice.

FLORENCE

What's that?

JACK

No quarreling -

What is the time?

FLORENCE

Look over towards my dresser -

My clock says half-past eleven.

JACK

Listen to that -

That hurdy-gurdy's playing Holy Night,

And on this street.

FLORENCE

And why not on this street?

JACK

You may be right. It may as well be played

Where you live as in front of where I work,

Some twenty stories up. I think you're right.

FLORENCE

Say, Jack, what is the matter? Come! be gay.

Tell me some stories. Buy another bottle.

Just think you make a lot of money, Jack.

You're young and prominent. They all know you.

I hear your name all over town. I see

Your picture in the papers. What's the matter?

JACK

I've lost my job for one thing.

FLORENCE

You don't mean it!

JACK

They used me and then fired me, same as you.

If you don't make the money, out you go.

FLORENCE

Yes, out I go. But, there are other places.

JACK

On further down the street.

FLORENCE

Not yet a while.

JACK

Not yet for me, but still the question is

Whether to fight it out for up or down,

Or run from everything, be free.

FLORENCE

You can't do that.

JACK

Why not?

FLORENCE

No more than I.

Oh well perhaps, if a nice man came by

To marry me then I could get away.

It happens all the time. Last week in fact

Christ Perko married Rachel who lived here.

He's rich as cream.

JACK

What corresponds to marriage

To take me from slavery?

FLORENCE

Money is everything.

JACK

Yes, everything and nothing.

Christ Perko's rich, Christ Perko runs this house,

The madam merely acts as figure-head;

Keeps check upon the girls and on the wine.

She's just the editor, and yet I'd rather

Be editor than owner. I was editor.

My Perko was the owner of a pulp mill,

Incorporate through some multi-millionaires,

And all our lesser writers were the girls,

Like you and Rachel.

FLORENCE

But you know before

He married Rachel, he was lover to

The madam here.

JACK

The stories tally, for

The pulp mill took my first assistant editor

To wife by making him the editor.

And I was fired just as the madam here

Lost out with Perko.

FLORENCE

This is growing funny...

Ahem! I'll ask you something -

As if I were a youth and you a girl -

How were you ruined first?

JACK

The same as you:

You ran away from school. It was romance.

You thought you loved this flashy travelling man.

And I - I loved adventure, loved the truth.

I wanted to destroy the force called "They."

There is no "They" - we're all together here,

And everyone must live, Christ Perko too,

The pulp-mill, the policeman, magistrate,

The alderman, the precinct captain too,

And you the girls, myself the editor,

And all the lesser writers. Here we are

Thrown in one integrated lot. You see

There is no "They," except the terms, the thought

Which ramifies and vivifies the whole. ...

So I came to the city, went to work

Reporting for a paper. Having said

There is no "They" - I've freed myself to say

What bitter things I choose. For how they drive you,

And terrify you, mock you, ridicule you,

And call you cub and greenhorn, send you round

To courts and dirty places, make you risk

Your body and your life, and make you watch

The rules about your writing; what's tabooed,

What names are to be cursed or to be praised,

What interests, policies to be subserved,

And what to undermine. So I went through,

Until I had a desk, wrote editorials -

Now said I to myself, I'm free at last.

But no, my manager, your madam, mark you,

Kept eye on me, for he was under watch

Of some Christ Perko. So my manager

Blue penciled me when I touched certain subjects.

But, as he was a just man, loved me too.

He gave me things to write where he could let

My conscience have full scope, as you might live

In this house where you saw the man you loved,

And no one else, though living in this hell.

For I lived in a hell, who saw around me

Such lying, hatred, malice, prostitution.

And when this offer came to be an editor

Of a great magazine, I seemed to feel

My courage and my virtue given reward.

Now, I should pass on poems, and on stories,

Creations of free souls. It was not so.

The poems and the stories one could see

Were written to be sold, to please a taste,

Placate a prejudice, keep still alive

An era dying, ready for the tomb,

Already smelling. And that was not all.

Just as the madam here must make report

To Perko, so the magazine had to run

To suit the pulp mill. As the madam here,

Assistant to Christ Perko, must keep friends

With alderman, policemen, magistrates,

So I was just a wheel in a machine

To keep it running with such larger wheels,

And by them run, of policies, and politics

Of State and Nation. Here was I locked in

And given dope to keep me still lest I

Cry out and wake the copper-who's the copper

For such as I was? If he heard me cry

How could he raid the magazine? If he raided

Where was the court to take me and the rest -

That's it, where is the court?

FLORENCE

It seems to me

You're bad as I am.

JACK

I am worse than you:

I poison minds with thoughts they take as good.

I drug an era, make it foul or dull -

You only sicken bodies here and there.

But you know how it is. You have remorse,

You fight it down, hush it with sophistry.

You think about the world, about your fellows:

You see that everyone is selling self,

Little or much somehow. You feed your body,

Try to be hearty, take things as they come.

You take athletics, try to keep your strength,

As you hear music, laugh, drink wine, and smoke,

Are bathed and coifed to keep your beauty fresh.

And through it all the soul's and body's needs,

The pleasures, interests, passions of our life,

The cry that comes from somewhere: "Live, O Soul,

The time is passing," move and claim your strength.

Till you forget yourself, forget the boy

And man you were, forget the dreams you had,

The creed you wished to live by - yes, what's worse,

See dreams you had, grown tawdry, see your creed

Cracked through and crumbled like a falling house.

And then you say: What is the difference?

As you might ask what virtue is and why

Should woman keep it.

I have reached this place

Save for one truth I hold to, shall still hold to:

As long as I have breath: The man who sees not,

Or cares not for the Truth that keeps the world

From vast disintegration is a brute,

And marked for a brute's death - that is his hell.

'Twas loyalty to this truth that made me lose

My place as editor. For when they came

And tried to make me pass an article

To poison millions with, I said, "I won't,

I won't by God. I'll quit before I do."

And then they said, "You quit," and so I quit.

FLORENCE

And so you took to drink and came to me!

And that's the same as if I came to you

And used you as an editor. I am nothing

But just a poor reporter in this house -

But now I quit.

JACK

Where are you going, Florence?

FLORENCE

I'm going to a village or a farm

Where I'll get up at six instead of twelve,

Where I'll wear calico instead of silk,

And where there'll be no furnace in the house.

And where the carpet which has kept me here

And keeps you here as editor is not.

I'm going to economize my life

By freeing it of systems which grow rich

By using me, and for the privilege

Bestow these gaudy clothes and perfumed bed.

I hate you now, because I hate my life.

JACK

Wait! Wait a minute.

FLORENCE

Dinah, call a cab!