The Designated Mourner

by Wallace Shawn

  JACK

  (To Howard) But really, Howard, when you speak of Tom—don’t you think Tom was a bit superior? I mean, he did do some courageous things at certain crucial moments—you know, in comparison to someone like Martin—

  HOWARD

  Oh really? In comparison to someone like Martin, do you think?

  JACK

  Well, what Martin did was very cowardly. Tom spoke out, and Martin just kept quiet and tried to protect himself.

  HOWARD

  But you see, there you’re judging another human being. Aren’t you? Jack?

  JACK

  Well, yes, I’m—

  HOWARD

  That’s the thing that doesn’t make sense to me. Because you’re saying in effect—you’re saying, in effect, that Tom behaved the way he should have behaved, but Martin didn’t. Martin ought to have behaved differently from the way he did behave. So you’re implying—what?—that you think you’d have behaved differently if you had been Martin?

  JACK

  No, I don’t say I would have—maybe I would have, I don’t know—but that’s not the point.

  HOWARD

  It isn’t?

  JACK

  No—I—

  JUDY

  What he really means is—

  JACK

  I mean, I’m simply saying that Martin might have acted in a better way.

  HOWARD

  But you see, that’s where I become incredibly confused. Because I mean, if you were Martin, or if someone were Martin, and they’d had Martin’s life and Martin’s experiences, then why wouldn’t they perceive the whole situation around them in exactly the way that Martin did, and act accordingly? And in that case, what’s the point of condemning Martin? Because he couldn’t help being what he was—and since he was what he was, he saw things the way he saw them, and he did what he did.

  I mean, you’re putting your energy into praising people or blaming people and saying who is better and worse—and meanwhile your attention is entirely turned away from the human suffering that is going on all around you and from the extremely difficult, hard-to-answer question of what’s bringing it about. I mean, rather than condemning Martin or whomever, wouldn’t it be more valuable to try to understand various things?—for example, to understand what circumstances in the world or in a person’s life might lead them to behave the way Martin behaved? What are the circumstances which come up in the world and lead to that? And how do they come up? I mean, all the judging, all the condemning, who’s superior, who’s inferior, “I was right,” and so on, are not terribly helpful to all the people who might actually be falling victim to every sort of horror while you’re taking the time to debate these things.

  JUDY

  (To the audience) I’ve always loved the way Father wrote in that essay about the people he called the “dirt-eaters,” the people who eat dirt, and the ones, like this strange young woman, who rise up from the dirt to lead them. As happened to many before him, love and desire brought him to new ideas, a new understanding; he felt suddenly connected to the poor of our country and even to the rebels who fought on their behalf. He shows us the very moments in which erotic attraction gently wove in his heart a bond of sympathy with the poor which strangely, in fact, turned out never to weaken . . . And I love the way he described the young woman as she sat there perched awkwardly on his parents’ sofa.

  JUDY AND HOWARD

  (Reading out loud) “Drinking her tea from my grandmother’s cup—yellow with flowers—”

  HOWARD

  (Reading) “—her hands nicked in a hundred places—she answered my questions politely, quietly. But even speaking softly, her voice was hard, like wire, wire twisting carefully around the simple words she spoke. How could someone like me even begin to imagine the life she lived? No safety. No hope. No shelter. No trees. A completely flat landscape going on forever. Running from the light, but the light was everywhere. When it rained, they were beaten into the ground, they had nowhere to go, lying in the mud. ‘We’ve been wandering like this for, actually, years,’ she said. Her beautiful skin, even her face—burned, scratched, like the fields she’d slept in.”

  JUDY

  For whatever reason—he was born that way—he had this odd ability—a quirky ability for someone from that background—he could read the face of anyone, effortlessly read it, and see the intelligence in it. So from an early age he was always wondering, Why were certain people—the ones not from his background—systematically made to eat dirt and kept so far away from the songs of Schubert?

  HOWARD

  (Reading) “After she left, alone in my bedroom, lying on the floor, I frightened myself by how much I cried. So this was ‘the enemy.’ And all I wanted in the world was to help her. I said out loud, ‘I’ll do anything, anything.’ But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was trembling with fear like the blind girl in the fairy tale.”

  JACK

  (To the audience) People think I was fascinated by Howard’s writing, that I’d always been some sort of admirer of Howard. That’s simply absurd. You know, I was a confused young man. I was walking around some vaguely expensive clothing store one afternoon with a group of people. I was trying to buy a pair of pajamas. And along came Judy, also shopping, and someone introduced us, and that thing happened—you know, where people use that rather terrifying expression, “Their eyes locked.” And then Judy left, but I kept having this really vivid fantasy that she and I were both trying on pajamas, and I was taking off my clothes and sort of wandering by mistake into her little booth. And then a few weeks later I ran into her again, late at night by the lake in the park, in that little alley of trees where they use to hang those enormous paper lanterns. And eventually she brought me over to the house, and I met Howard. I met him, we talked, we got along fine. But my God, I was never tempted for a single minute to become a disciple of Howard. I was an observer, at best. Even on a very good day, a very good day, a vague hanger-on was the most I ever would have called myself, if I would have called myself anything. That whole business of living at the whim of another human being—watching out oh so carefully for the moods, the sensitivities, on the great man’s face—well, that was terribly appealing to all those idealistic young girls who were always hanging around, or to the serious young men in their dark overcoats, but God knows, not to me.

  I mean, of course he was remarkable. Who would have denied it? It was remarkable simply to make all the choices he made: to dress in blues and greens, and not reds or grays; to know about the Sumerians, but not about the Assyrians. Sure, it was great. Although if you actually thought about it, it was all sort of arbitrary, really, in a way. Why blues, rather than reds, you see? I mean, there was no answer. I would say to myself every day, you know, Oh, he’s accomplished so much, and I’ve accomplished nothing, so I really don’t deserve to lick his boots. But I couldn’t help it—it did bother me that all those wonderful choices that sort of made up the very fabric of Howard were, at their foundation, really sort of mindless.

  But of course I envied him. What are you talking about? I envied the whole gang of them—all the old unbearables—Bob, Arthur, the whole crowd. And Howard? Come on. The possibility of not envying Howard didn’t even arise. It didn’t even arise. Forget his writing—I envied him simply because of the way he could read. It was so easy, so casual. The way I might have picked up an article about the latest approach to cooking string beans, he would pick up a book of poems by John Donne. I mean, I was clever enough to know that John Donne was offering something that was awfully enjoyable—I just wasn’t clever enough to actually enjoy it. I’d devoted my life to it, I suppose you could say, but I couldn’t get near to the great writers. Day after day and year after year, I read them and read them, but they always seemed remote. I didn’t want them to. They just did. I was kept out of it all, kept away. Howard, on the other hand, was let right in. Come in, they said. Here we are. Come talk, come be with us. We’re right here. Howard couldn’t even comprehend w
hat the problem was for the rest of us poor mortals. How could he, you see. But do you know?—I always felt I was on the brink of understanding. I felt I could have learned. I was ready to learn. I would have humbled myself to any degree in order to learn, as a matter of fact. But he wouldn’t teach me. None of them would. Howard, Judy, Bob, Arthur—the readers of poetry.

  HOWARD

  Jack wasn’t actually a bad fellow, you know. I just found him a little bit vague at times. A little bit vague, a little bit lazy. You know, he was lazy. In fact, actually, he was so lazy that his favorite foods—I’m not making this up, because I observed it quite carefully—were soup, risotto, mashed potatoes, and ice cream. I’m not exaggerating!

  JACK

  God, I enjoyed watching Howard’s reactions when Judy and I had just met, and I was just starting to come over to the house. You know, the thought of Judy and me being alone together was so horrifying to Howard that he would actually sort of follow us around, from room to room, without knowing he was doing it. I mean, literally for hours at a time he’d be creeping and crawling around us like some strange animal, his face frozen into this hideous little smile. At that time I happened to be living just a few streets away—I had a tiny apartment in one of those famous, awful cylindrical high-rises—and fairly often Judy and I would sort of spend the evening in my falling-apart bed with a bottle or two of something or other, and then we’d be hungry, and as I never had any food at my place, we’d get up, throw on a few clothes, and sneak very quietly into Howard’s house to raid the refrigerator. Judy’s face would be bright red, and she’d constantly be bursting out into that weird hysterical laugh she used to have then, and halfheartedly trying to muffle it, and when Howard would appear in his slippers with his special little smile, you could tell he found our whole manner just crassly obscene. Ha ha ha! Of course the comical part was that I happened to know, and Howard didn’t, that I wasn’t actually a good lover at all! God, no—I was really awful! Ha ha ha! I had no control over my own responses. I used to remind myself of my college friend Jorge who had this pet lemur which he kept on a leash and which was always either leaping up at people unexpectedly, or else lying down in some public place and refusing to budge, and I always used to think about Jorge’s apologetic expressions and gestures. In any case, women had always told me, you know, “You’re not sensitive, you’re very clumsy, the way you approach a woman’s body is simply wrong.” One woman had said, “You know, wrestling is really not the right model, try something else.” But Judy knew absolutely nothing about sex, so she didn’t mind. It all seemed great. Needless to say, I never pointed out to her, “Christ, you know, if you like me, you should try a man who can really do this.” She was terribly happy. So we really spent years basically almost living there in Howard’s house, and it wasn’t that bad, but then things got so much nicer when we finally moved to our own little apartment—entirely on the other side of town from Howard! We moved in in April, and we had a little window, and, from the tree outside, these leaves grew into the window in the most voluptuous, irresistible, sexual way, and Judy and I grew sort of intertwined, getting up each morning with just the two of us—it was a wonderful time. Well, do I need to tell you it was a short interval? Good Lord—let’s try to be realistic! Howard, after all, was in very poor health. I mean, he was much too sick, he was much too ill—he couldn’t be expected to live by himself without Judy and me in the next room! And what possible value could our happiness have, in comparison to how seriously ill he was? He was so ill—the trouble was that no one could ever say in just what way he was ill, what was wrong with him exactly. He certainly had some awfully good days for someone who was so ill. For example, those who saw him on the day when he carried the logs from the garage to the house would probably be unlikely ever to forget it: up and down the driveway, up and down the driveway, sweat pouring off in sheets from his face, refusing rudely all our offers of help, his eyes shining yellow like the eyes of a wolf . . . You see, during all those years, the only times I could really pull Judy totally away from Howard were when we’d go on a trip, when we’d go to one of those awful places Judy loved—one of the miserable places, tropical nightmare zones—and those trips were so nice, really, because no matter how sad or wistful Judy might have seemed before we left—well, you know, introduce her to a shepherd, or a couple of sheep, and she’d perk right up.

  JUDY

  But the things that Father had said in his twenties could not be unsaid. They didn’t disappear. Their consequences of course could be put off—suspended—but not forever. Our beloved rulers were naturally reluctant to show any unfriendliness to the wayward son of one of their own, but that didn’t mean they didn’t all read that little volume of essays whose orange binding we knew so well, or that they ever forgot it. No one did. Everyone knew that the story wasn’t over. And so people were often quite nervous around Father. Some people were afraid to meet him—you could see the tension filling their faces—and there were others who saw him on a daily basis, but the anxiety they felt somehow didn’t diminish, or even increased. And of course I’m thinking of Joan more than anyone, really. You know, I always liked Joan the best of Father’s friends—“the Rodent,” as we called her, because she was thin and gray, or as Father once said, she was like a cloth you might use to polish silver with. I loved Joan, but she was a little weak. Loud and funny and wild when she played with us children—my friends always begged her to join our games—she was quiet with the grownups. Father meant everything to her—but one day she lost her nerve. I remember his face as he told me about it. “Joan’s going away,” he said. She went to live in a small suburb down by the water and never came back.

  JACK

  But almost as soon as we moved our belongings back to Howard’s house—it was just at the beginning of the rainy season—things began to happen. And that whole awful year began to unfold.

  HOWARD

  (To Judy) Just help me, please, darling, come to me, please—

  JUDY

  What is it, Father?

  HOWARD

  What?

  JUDY

  Are you—what?—

  HOWARD

  (To the audience) Another wave of nausea washing over me, I’m praying for death, everything is dark, everything—sour. Terrible sounds. I need to talk to Judy—very important (To Judy) What have you brought me?

  JUDY

  Bob left his book for you.

  HOWARD

  Extraordinary. Yes—this is magnificent—(Overcome by emotion)

  JUDY

  Dad—

  HOWARD

  This is a drawing of a building which—(Hearing something) Did you hear something? God, what was that?—Is there any cereal?

  JUDY

  No, Dad.

  JACK

  (To the audience) First there was the rock through Howard’s window. Who had thrown it? Did it mean something? Probably not, but you really couldn’t tell. And then my thing started—you know, mental problems or whatever you’d call them. I don’t even know how to tell the story or where I should begin it—I mean, mental phenomena—they’re a little intangible—don’t you think so? But anyway it happened that there was a certain moment one day, not long after the rock, when I just said to myself, Well, I’m going to spend a night away from this house, and so I packed a little suitcase, and I went and spent a night just all by myself in a big hotel in a small town about three hours out on the railway line. Well, so, late that night, I was lying in my tiny bed in my room in the hotel, and I was reading a book of poetry by one of our very finest authors, and all of a sudden I began to hear sounds through the wall from the room next door, and the couple next door began to tease each other, they began to laugh, and while they laughed, they started kissing, and they started moving around in the room and falling into things. Well, suddenly I was sitting straight up in my bed, and I knew I had to decide very quickly, immediately in fact, What should I do, what should I do, should I make an effort to continue my reading, or in
stead should I listen to the couple next door, maybe with one of my hands sort of accidentally falling onto my dick? There was no time to think—the couple next door had stopped laughing now, they were groaning quietly with a sort of warm kind of gratitude—and so I put the book down quietly on my bedside table. And after the couple had finished making love—and it took a long time—they went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. My hand reached out toward the book on the table, but then I thought, Wait—do I really want to go back to reading that book? Might I not actually in fact prefer to read the magazine that I’d bought in the lobby, the one with all the stories about healthy, well-exercised, rather young actresses? So I read for a while in that very engaging magazine, but I still couldn’t sleep, and so once again I started to reach for the book, but as I reached for the book my attention was drawn to the end of my bed, where a blank face looked expectantly into mine, a familiar framed screen which held inside it colors, songs, characters, drunkenness, love—beauty. And as I sat in the darkness and watched the screen for hour after hour I thought to myself, Well, at some point we have to draw some distinctions—don’t we? I mean, pardon me, but shouldn’t there be some distinction drawn between the things we say, the lies, the “I like poetry,” “I like Rembrandt” on the one hand—and I mean, of course it’s important to say those things, because after all if you don’t say them then you really become simply a zoo animal, you become an empty thing, you’re nothing more then really than a large balloon with a mouth, genitals, paws and an asshole, a nice great big one—but still they’re lies, they are lies—and then on the other hand things that are true, like “I’m watching this very nice screen right now, I’m watching it, and I’m enjoying it”?