Drinks Before Dinner by E. L. Doctorow Read Free Book Online

each day their number increases because more and more people want to be ready for the time when there is nothing left but to run, when nothing else will avail but to run, and they do not want to be among those who cannot run or who falter and stumble and collapse from the attempt to run. They do not want that. They intend to be able to run. Their bodies are in training but their minds haven’t made the announcement. When will they make the announcement? I have no idea why they haven’t already made the announcement.
( The sound of the doorbell )
JOEL    There is our guest of honor.
( The little GIRL cries out . EDGAR drops down on his knees before her )
EDGAR    What? What is the matter? What do you think is going to happen?
GIRL    The end of the world!
    Curtain

Act Two

( A few minutes later. Everyone onstage, as in Act One. But the guest of honor , ALAN , sits tied to a straight-back chair . EDGAR holds the gun .)
EDGAR    Speaking for all of us, Mr. Secretary, I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to meet you, to have you here among us, in this very room, and to have experienced the almost mystical moment of your arrival just as the idea came over us that the world is coming to an end. You can imagine how we look forward to the views on this subject of our greatest statesman.
ANDREA    The idea of the end of the world seems logical to me. It is a perfectly reasonable possibility that the world will soon end. I think I am more frightened of the thought of my own death in the ordinary way while everyone else goes on living than that I will die because the world ends. I find I am even curious to know how it will happen.
EDGAR    Perhaps it’s already begun. Perhaps that is what I feel, the already-begun ending. Perhaps I can feel it with some trace in my being of the instinct that allows animals in a forest to anticipate a storm or sense a fire before it can be sensed. Is something wrong with me, Mr. Secretary, or is something happening that I am only responding to with some awakened perception? There may be nothing the matter with me except that I feel this. We have lived past what we used to be and still think we are, and anticipate with the laid-back ears of an animal some terrible holocaust of the world. Perhaps we are running in perception, perhaps we are becoming new beings in this perception.
ALAN    There is nothing new about pistols. People have been running around and firing them for a long time.
EDGAR    That’s true. But if the world were really coming to an end, I mean if that is truly the situation we are in, then surely the carrying of this pistol is as unprecedented as that. The world has never ended before. Whatever we do, then, becomes as new as the ending of the world. The power, the terrible might or power released by the ending of the world, releases in us first a perception of its end, an anticipation of its end first in the most sensitive of us, the children, and then, in disguised ways, in the rest of us, who run or who find themselves with pistols in their hands. It is up to us to understand through the actions of our bodies the announcements that are being made. Just as we attempt to understand the disguised announcements of our dreams.
ALAN    How peculiar to hear that idea expressed. I will tell you of a dream of mine. I have this dream on a regular basis. There is some state of war. There is some sort of revolution and I hear the drumming of feet. It is night—the sky is lit by fire. Shadows of men run among the trees. Wrecked helicopters lie like giant insects on suburban lawns. I don’t know if I’m with the state or with the revolution. A priest comes to my home and gives me for safekeeping a parcel wrapped in newspaper and tied with twine. He is on the run. I take him through the backyards, through the woods, to a bluff overlooking the highway leading to the city. The highway is filled with tanks and military trucks with their headlights on. They are not