Long Day's Journey Into Night Page #12

Well I wouldn't worry about the virtue part of it if I were you.

But you recited it well lad.

- Who wrote it?

- Baudelaire.

Never heard of him.

Where do you get your taste in authors?

This damned library of yours...

Voltaire and Rousseau and Schopenauer and Ibsen ! Atheists, fools and madmen!

And your poet this Baudelaire.

And Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, and Whitman and Poe!

Whore-mongers and degenerates.

- I have three good sets of Shakespeare you could read.

- They say he was a souse too.

They lie. I don't doubt he liked his glass it's a good man's failling

but he knew how to drink that it didn't poison his mind with morbidness and filth.

Don't compare him with the pack you've got here.

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

Perhaps it would be wise to change the subject.

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.

That's true, so you did.

And a terrible ordeal it was I remember

hearing you murder the lines.

I kept wishing I'd paid over the bet without making you prove it.

Did you hear?

She's moving around.

I hope to God she doesn't come down.

Yes, she'd be nothing more than a ghost haunting the past by this time.

Back before I was born.

Doesn't she do the same with me?

You must take her memories with a grain of salt.

Her wonderful home was ordinary enough.

Her father wasn't the great noble irish gentleman she makes out. He was a nice

enough man, good company 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 condems my drinking

but she forgets his.

It's true he never touched a drop until 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.

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

No.

Well what do you say to a game or two of casino lad?

All right.

We can't lock up and go to bed until Jamie comes on the last trolley.

Which I hope he won't.

I don't want to go upstairs anyway.

Until she's gone to sleep.

Neither do I.

As I told you before...

...you must take her tales of the past with a grain of salt.

The piano playing and her dream of becoming a concert pianist.

It was put in her head by the nuns flattering her.

She was their pet.

They loved her for being so devout

And the idea she might have become a nun, that's the worst.

Your mother was one of the most beautiful girls you ever could 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, pick up your hand.

Yes. Yes.

Let's see what I have here.

Listen.

She's coming downstairs.

Let's play our game, pretend not to notice. She'll soon go up again.

- I don't see her, she must have started down... and turned back.

- Thank God!

Yes.

- It's pretty horrible to see her the way she must be now.

- She's been terribly frightened about your illness for all her pretending.

- Don't be too hard on her lad, remember she's not responsible.

- I know damn well she's not to blame.

And I know who is. You are. Your damned stinginess.

If you'd spent money on a decent doctor when she was so sick

after I was born she would never known morphine existed.

You must try to see my side of it too lad.

How was I to know he was that kind of doctor?

He'd a good reputation.

- Among the souses in the hotel bar I suppose.

- You lie! I asked the hotel proprietor to recomend the best...

And at the same time crying "poor house"

and making it plain you wanted a cheap one.

I know your system.

- God I ought to after this afternoon.

-What about this afternoon?

Never mind now. We're talking about Mama.

I'm saying no matter how you try and excuse yourself,

you know damn well your stinginess was to blame.

- I say you're a liar, shut your mouth right now or...

- After you'd found out she was a morphine addict why didn't you send her

- to a cure then, at the start, when she still had a chance?

- What did I know about morphine?

It was years before I discovered what was wrong.

Why didn't I send her to a cure you say?

I 've spent thousands on thousands in cures, a waste!

What have they done her? She's always started again.

Yes , it's because you've never given her

anything that would help her want to stay off it.

No home except this summer dump in a place she hates and

you've refused to spend money even to make this look decent.

While you keep buying more property and playing sucker for every con-man

with a gold mine or a silver mine or any other get rich quick swindle.

You've dragged her around the road, season after season,

on one night stands with no one she could talk to.

Waiting night after night in dirty hotel rooms for you

to come home with a bun on after the bar has closed.

It isn't any wonder she didn't want to be cured.

God. God!

When I think of it I hate your guts.

Edmund how dare you talk to your father like that?

You insolent young cub!

After all I've done for you.

- We'll come to that, what you're doing for me.

- Will you stop repeating your mother's crazy accusations?

I've never dragged her on the road against her will.

Naturally I wanted her with me, I loved her.

And she came because she loved me and wanted to be with me that's the truth.

She needn't have been lonely, she had her children and I

insisted dispite the expense on having a nurse to travel with her.

Yes, your one generosity.

And that because you were jealous of her spending too much time with us.

And wanted us out of your way. And that was another mistake too.

If she had to take care of me all by herself and had that to occupy her mind

- maybe she'd been able to stop.

- Or for that matter since you insist on judging things by what she says when

she's not in her right mind, if you'd never been born

she'd never...

Sure.

I know that's how she feels Papa.

She doesn't.

She loves you as dearly as ever a mother loved a son.

I've only said that because you've put me in such a God damned rage.

Making up the past, saying you hate me.

I didn't mean it Papa.

- I'm like Mama. I can't help liking you in spite of everything.

- Well I might say the same of you.

You're no great shakes as a son.

It's a case of "A poor thing but mine own".

Well, what's happened to our game?

Who's play is it?

Yours, I guess.

You mustn't let yourself get too down hearted lad

by the bad news you had today.

Both doctors promised me, if you obey orders, at this place

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes