Â
(HANS
leaves.
)
Â
QUITT
Was there anything new?
Â
WIFE
I stole this blouse.
Â
QUITT
The main thing is not to get caught. Anything else?
Â
WIFE
I stopped here and there and then walked on. Why don't you sit down too?
Â
QUITT
You don't look well.
Â
(
Pause
.)
WIFE
Yes, but at least it's already evening. (
She gets up and walks out quickly
.)
Â
(QUITT
sits down even before she's gone. He remains alone for a while. The silhouette of the city is completely illuminated in the meantime.
HANS
returns with a book.
QUITT
looks up.
)
Â
HANS
It's me, still.
Â
QUITT
Tell me, Hans, what's your life actually like?
Â
( HANS
sits down
.)
Â
HANS
I knew what you would say the moment you opened your mouth. But I couldn't interrupt you at that point. So let's forget it.
Â
(
Pause.
)
Â
QUITT
Stop looking me in the eye.
Â
HANS
I do that whenever I'm at a loss how to please you.
Â
QUITT
Tell me about yourself.
Â
HANS
What do you mean?
Â
QUITT
Don't you understand, I am curious to know your story. How do
you
behave when you would like to speak but can only scream? Don't you sometimes get so tired that you can only imagine everything flat on the ground? Doesn't it also sometimes happen to you that when you think of your relationship to others you only see heavy wet rags lying around everywhere? Now tell me about yourself.
Â
HANS
You mention me.
Yourself you mean.
Â
(
Pause.
)
Â
QUITT
Why does my itty-bitty mind go yakking so affectedly into the big wide world? And can't help itself? (
Screams
) And doesn't want it any differently? I am important. I am important. I am important. Incidentally, why don't you look me in the eye now?
Â
HANS
Because there's nothing new to see there.
Â
(
Pause
.)
Â
QUITT
Please read to me.
Â
HANS
(
Sits down and reads.
) “âI shall have to let you go after all,' his uncle said one day at the end of the midday meal, just as a magnificent thunderstorm was breaking, sending the rustling rain like diamond missiles down into the lake, so that it twitched and seethed and heaved. Victor made no reply whatever but listened for what else would come. âEverything is futile in the end,' his uncle started up again in a slow drawn-out voice, âit's futile, youth and old age don't belong together. The years that could have been used have passed now, they are lowering down on the other side of the mountains and no power on earth can drag them back to the near side where cold shadows are already falling.' Victor could not have been more awed. The venerable old man happened to be sitting in such a way that the lightning flashes illuminated his face, and sometimes, in the dusky room, it seemed as though fire flowed through the man's gray hair and light trickled across his weatherbeaten face. âOh, Victor, do you know life? Do you know that thing that people call old age?'ââHow could I, Uncle, as I am still so young?'ââTrue, you don't know it, and there's no way you could. Life is boundless as long as you are still young. You always think you still have a long stretch ahead of you, that you've traveled only a short way. That's why you put so much off to the next day, why you put this and that aside, to tackle it later on. But then when you want to tackle it, it is too late and you notice that you are old. That is why life is a limitless field if you look at it from the beginning, and is scarcely two paces long when you regard it from the end. It is a sparkling thing, something so beautiful that you feel like plunging into it, and you feel that it would have to last foreverâand old age is a moth darting in the dusk, fluttering ominously about our ears. That is why you would like to stretch out your hands
so as not to have to leave, because you have missed so much. When an aged man stands on a mountain of achievements, what good is it to him? I have done much, all sorts of things, and have nothing from it. Everything turns to dust in a moment if you haven't built an existence that outlasts your coffin. The man who has sons, nephews, and grandsons around him in his old age will often become a thousand years old. Then the same many-sided life persists even when he is gone, life continues just the same; yes, you don't even notice that one small segment of this life veered off to the side and never came back any more. With my death everything that I myself have been will disappear.' After these words the old man stopped speaking. He folded his napkin together, as was his custom, rolled it into a cylinder, and shoved it into the silver ring which he kept for the purpose. Then he assembled the various bottles into a certain order, put the cheese and sweetmeats on their plates, and plunged the glass bells over them. Yet of all these objects he took none away from the table, as was his usual habit, but left them standing there and sat before them. Meanwhile, the thunderstorm had passed, with softer flashes and a muted thundering it moved down the far slope of the craggy eastern mountain range, and the sun fought its way back out, gradually filling the room with a lovely fire. At daybreak the next morning Victor took his walking stick into his hand and slung one strap of his satchel over his arm. The spitz, who understood everything, bounded with joy. Breakfast was consumed amid much small talk. âI'll take you as far as the gate,' the uncle said when Victor had gotten up, had hitched his satchel on his shoulder, and was about to take his leave. The old man had gone into the adjacent room and must have triggered a spring or set off some kind of mechanical contraption; for at that moment Victor heard the rattling of the gate and saw, through the window, how that gate opened slowly by itself. âWell,' said his uncle while walking out, âeverything is ready,' Victor reached for his walking stick and placed his cap on his head.
The uncle walked down the stairs with him and across the open space in the garden as far as the gate. Neither said a word during their walk. At the gate the uncle stopped. Victor looked at him for a while. Tears shimmered in his bright-colored eyes, testifying to a profound emotionâthen he suddenly bent down and vehemently kissed the wrinkled hand. The old man emitted a dull uncanny sound like a sobâand pushed the youth out by the gate. In two hours the latter had reached Attmaning, and as he stepped out from the dark trees toward the town he happened to hear its bells tolling, and never has a sound sounded so sweet to him as this tolling which fell so endearingly upon his ears, a sound he had not heard for so long. The Innkeeper's Alley was filled with the beautiful brown animals of the mountains which the cattle dealers were driving down toward the lowland, and the inn's guest room was full of people since it was market day. It seemed to Victor as if he had been dreaming for a long time and had only now returned to the world. Now that he was back out in the fields of the people, on their highways, part of their merry doings, now that the expanse of gentle rolling hills stretched out wide and endless before him, and the mountains which he had left hovered behind as a blue wreath; now his heart came apart in this great circumambient view and outraced him far, far beyond the distant, scarcely visible line of the horizon ⦔
Â
QUITT
How nice that this armchair has a headrest.
(Pause.)
How much time has passed since then! In those days, in the nineteenth century, even if you didn't have some feeling for the world, there at least existed a memory of a universal feeling, and a yearning. That is why you could replay the feeling and replay it for the others as in this story. And because you could replay the feeling as seriously and patiently and conscientiously as a restorerâthe German poet Adalbert Stifter after all was a restorerâthat feeling was really produced, perhaps.
In any event, people believed that what was being played there existed, or at least that it was possible. All I actually do is quote; everything that is meant to be serious immediately becomes a joke with me, genuine signs of life of my own slip out of me purely by accident, and they exist only at the moment when they slip out. Afterward then they areâwellâwhere you once used to see the whole, I see nothing but particulars now. Hey, you with your ingrown earlobes! it suddenly slips out of me, and instead of speaking with someone whom I notice, I step on his heels so that his shoe comes off. I would so like to be full of pathos! Von Wullnow, with a couple of women bathing in the nude at sunrise, bawled out nothing but old college songs in the waterâthat's what's left of him. What slips out of me is only the raw sewage of previous centuries. I lead a businessman's life as camouflage. I go to the telephone as soon as it rings. I talk faster with the car door open behind me. We fix our prices and faithfully stick to our agreements. Suddenly it occurs to me that I am playing something that doesn't even exist, and that's the difference. That's the despair of it! Do you know what I'm going to do? I won't stick to our arrangement. I'm going to ruin their prices and them with it. I'm going to employ my old-fashioned sense of self as a means of production. I haven't had anything of myself yet, Hans. And they are going to cool their hot little heads with their clammy hands, and their heads will grow cold as well. It will be a tragedy. A tragedy of business life, and I will be the survivor. And the investment in the business will be me, just me alone. I will slip out of myself and the raw sewage will sweep them away. There will be lightning and thunder, and the idea will become flesh.
Â
(
There is thunder
.)
Â
HANS
This time
I can find no rhyme.
Â
QUITT
Good night.
Â
(HANS
leaves.
QUITT
drums his fists on his chest and emits Tarzan-like screams. Pause. His
WIFE
comes in and stops in front of him.)
Â
WIFE
I have something else to say to you.
Â
QUITT
Don't speak to me. I want to get out of myself now. I am now myself and as such I am on speaking terms only with myself.
Â
WIFE
But I would like to say something to you. Please.
Â
(
Pause
.)
Â
QUITT
(
Suddenly very tender
) Then tell me. (
He takes her around the waist, she moves in his embrace
.) Tell me.
Â
WIFE
I ⦠where it ⦠because ⦠hm (
She clears her throat.
) ⦠and you ⦠isn't it ⦠(
She laughs indecisively
.) ⦠this and that ⦠and autumn ⦠like a stone ⦠that roaring ⦠the Ammonites ⦠and the mud on the soles of the shoes ⦠(
She puts her hand to her face, and the stage becomes dark
.)
Â
END ACT ONE
The silhouette of the city. The punching bag has been replaced by a huge balloon which, almost imperceptibly, is shrinking. A large, slowly melting block of ice with a spot shining on it has replaced the matching sofa and armchairs, a glass trough with dough rising in it somewhere else, also with a spot on it. A piano. A large boulder in the background with phrases slowly and constantly appearing and fading on it:
OUR GREATEST SINâTHE IMPATIENCE OF CONCEPTSâTHE WORST IS OVERâTHE LAST HOPE.
Next to them are children's drawings. The usual stage lighting (which remains the same throughout).
Â
HANS
is lying on an old deck chair, dressed as before, and is asleep. He is mumbling in his sleep and laughs; time passes.
Â
QUITT
walks in from behind the wall, rubbing his hands. He executes a little dance step while walking. He whistles to himself.
Â
QUITT
It's been ages since I've whistled! (
He hums. The humming makes him want to talk.
) Hey, Hans! (HANS
leaps up out of his sleep and immediately goes to relieve
QUITT
of the coat which he isn't wearing. )
You can't stop acting the servant even in your sleep, can you? When I was just singing to myself I suddenly couldn't stand being alone any more.
(He regards
HANS.) And now you're already annoying me again. Were you dreaming of me? Oh, forget it, I don't even want to know. (
He whistles again.
HANS
whistles along
.) Stop whistling. It's no fun if you whistle along.
Â
HANS
I dreamed. Really, I was dreaming. The dream was about a pocket calendar with rough and smooth sides. The rough sides were the work days, the smooth ones the days which I have off. I slithered for days on end over calendar pages.
Â
QUITT
Dream on, little dreamer, dreamâjust as long as you don't interpret your dreams.
Â
HANS
But what if the dream interprets itselfâas it did just now?
Â
QUITT
You are talking about yourselfâwhy is that?
Â
HANS
You've infected me.
Â
QUITT
And how?
Â
HANS
By employing your personalityâand having success with yourself too. Suddenly I saw that I lacked something. And
when I thought about it I realized that I lacked everything. For the first time I didn't just sort of exist for myself, but existed as someone who is comparable, say, with you. I couldn't bear the comparing any more, began to dream, evaluated myself. Incidentally, you just interrupted me and it was important. (
He sits down and closes his eyes. He shakes his head.)
Too bad. It's over. I felt really connected when I was dreaming. (
To
QUlTT) I don't want to have to go on shaking my head much longer.
Â
QUITT
It occurs to me I should have gotten you up earlier. Then you wouldn't get ideas like this. So you want to leave me?
Â
HANS
On the contrary, I want to stay forever. I still have much to learn from you.
Â
QUITT
Would you like to be like me?
Â
HANS
I have to be. Recently I've been forcing myself to copy your handwriting. I no longer write with a slant but vertically. That is like standing up after a lifetime of bowing down. But it hurts, too. I also no longer put my hands like this ⦠(
Thumbs forward, fingers backward on his hips
) on my hips, but like you do ⦠(
Fingers forward, thumbs backward)
That gives me more self-confidence. Or standing up ⦠(
He stands up
.) I stand on one leg and play with the other like you. A new sense of leisure. Only when I buy something, say at the butcher's, I place my legs quite close together and parallel and don't move from the spot. That makes an upper-class impression, and I always get the best cut and the freshest calf's liver. (
He yawns
.) Have you noticed that I no longer yawn as unceremoniously as I used to, but with a pursed mouth, like you?
Â
QUITT
The long and short of it: you are still here for me?
Â
HANS
Because I am compelled to be as free as you are. You have everything, live only for yourself, don't have to make any comparisons any more. Your life is poetic, Mr. Quitt, and poetry, as we know, produces a sense of power that oppresses no oneâbut rather dances the dance of freedom for us, the oppressed. At one time I felt caught in the act even when someone watched me licking stamps. Now I don't bat an eyelash when someone calls me a lackey; carry the garbage can out onto the sidewalk in my tails absolutely unfazed; walk self-confidently arm in arm with the ugliest woman; do work, willy-nilly, which isn't mine to doâthat is my freedom, which I have learned from you. In the past I used to be envious of what you could afford to do. I didn't feel treated like a man but like a mannequinânotice my new freedom, I'm already playing with words!âcursed you under my breath as a bloodsucker, did not see the human being in you, but only the corporation mogul. That's how unfree I was. Now, as soon as I imagine you, I see the self-assured curve that your watch chain describes over your belly and already I am moved.
Â
QUITT
This sounds familiar. (HANS
laughs.
) So you're just making fun of me. I should have known that someone with your history would never change. But you're not the one who matters. It's the others that count.
Â
HANS
Do you actually despise yourself, Mr. Quitt?âNow that you've screwed them all?
Â
QUITT
Myself? No. But I might despise someone
like
me. (
Long pause
.) Why don't you react? Just now when you weren't answering me, what I said began to crawl back into me and wanted to make itself unsaid, and me too, by shriveling me deep inside. (
Pause
.) You're making fun of my language. I would much prefer to express myself inarticulately like the little people in the play recently, do you remember? Then you would finally pity me. This way I suffer my articulateness as part of my suffering. The only ones that you and your kind pity are those who can't speak about their suffering.
Â
HANS
How do you want to be pitied? Even if you became speechless with suffering your money would speak for you, and the money is a fact and youâyou're nothing but a consciousness.
Â
QUITT
(
Derisively
) Pity only occurred to me because the characters in the play moved me soânot that they were speechless, but that despite their seemingly dehumanized demeanor they wanted really to be as kind to each other as we spectators who all live in more human surroundings are already with each other. They, too, wanted tenderness, a life together, et ceteraâthey just can't express it, and that is why they rape and murder each other. Those who live in inhuman conditions represent the last humans on stage. I like that paradox. I like to see human beings on the stage, not monsters. Human beings, gnarled with suffering, unsche-matic, drenched with pain and joy. The animalistic attracts me, the defenseless, the abused and insulted. Simple people, do you understand? Real people whom I can feel and taste, living people. Do you know what I mean? People! Simply ⦠people! Do you know what I mean? Not fakes but â¦
(
He thinks for quite a while
.) people. You understand: people. I hope you know what I mean.
Â
HANS
I can't take your jokes so soon after waking up. But let's suppose you're being serious. There must be another possibility which makes your dichotomyâhere fakes, there human beingsâlook ridiculous.
Â
QUITT
Which?
Â
HANS
I don't know.
Â
QUITT
Why not?
Â
HANS
That I don't know is the very thing that lends me hope. Besides, as one of those whom you have in mind: I can say it: every time when the curtain rises I become discouraged at the prospect that things will be human again up there any moment now. Let's further assume that you mean what you say: perhaps the people on stage moved youânot because they were people, but because everything was shown as it is. For example, if you recognize a portrait as true to life, you frequently develop a peculiar sympathy for the person in the portrait without necessarily having any feeling for the real person. Couldn't the same thing have happened to you when you saw the play? That you empathized with the inarticulate people represented there on the stage and think, therefore, that you have done with the real ones? And why do you want to see real characters on stage at all, who belong in the past and are alien to you?
Â
QUITT
Because I like to think back to the days when I was poor too, and couldn't express myself, and primarily because the painted grimaces from my own class sit in the audience anyway. On stage I want to see the other class, as crude and as unadorned as possible. After all, I go to the theater to relax.
Â
HANS
(
Laughs
.) So, you
are
being derisive.
Â
QUITT
I meant that seriously. (
He laughs. Both of them laugh
.)
Â
(WIFE
enters
.)
Â
HANS
Here comes one of your real people.
Â
WIFE
Are you laughing at me?
Â
QUITT
Who else?
Â
WIFE
And what were you saying about me?
Â
HANS
Nothing. We were only laughing about you.
Â
( WIFE
laughs too; she slaps
QUITT
on the shoulder, nudges him in the ribs.
)
Â
QUITT
We're all merry for once, right?
Â
HANS
Since business is so good, Mr. Quittâwhy don't you cross my palm with silver?
Â
QUITT
You're welcome.
Â
(
He wants to put the coin into HANS's outstretched hand but
HANS
pulls back the hand and stretches out the other. Now
QUITT
wants to put the coin into that hand, but
HANS,
so as to adjust to
QUITT
, has already stretched out his first hand again. When he notices that
QUITT
⦠he stretches out his second hand again. But
QUITT
tries to put the coin into
HANS's
first hand again and in the meantime, etc. Until
QUITT
puts the coin away again, walks to the piano, and plays a boogie.
WIFE
takes
HANS
and dances with him ⦠Then
QUITT
suddenly plays a slow, sad blues and sings along with it.)
Â
QUITT
Â
Sometimes I wake up at night
and everything I want to do next day
suddenly seems silly,
how silly to button your shirt,
how silly to look in your eyes,
how silly the foam on the glass of beer,
how silly to be loved by you.
Â
Sometimes I lie awake
and everything I imagine
makes everything that much more inconceivableâ
inconceivable the pleasure of standing at a hot-dog stand,
inconceivable New Zealand,
inconceivable thinking of sooner or later,
inconceivable to be alive or dead
Â
I want to hate you and hate plastic,
you want to hate me and hate the fog.
I want to love you and love hilly countrysides,
you would like to love me
and have a lovely city, a lovely color, a lovely animal.
Â
Everyone stay away from me,
it is the time after my death
and what I just imagined, with a sigh, as my life
are only blisters on my body
which sigh when they burst