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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!
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