Peter Handke - The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

Businessmen are people who get things moving, as Schumpeter says. Let’s oil the machinery of the world.

KILB

Someone’s coming.

VON WULLNOW

( Doesn’t hear him .) This is an important day. For the first time we want to give up our atomization. We’ve been lonely long enough. We planned in loneliness, in sad isolation we watched the market, helplessly each of us set his price by himself, hoping for the best. Despising everything that was alien, each of us on his little island watched the other’s advertising campaigns. We did not recognize our mutual needs, were even proud of our individualism. That has to change; we can’t go on like this.

(PAULA TAX hurriedly enters .)

QUITT

I was just thinking of you, Paula.

PAULA

And?

QUITT

Nothing bad.

VON WULLNOW

Have a seat. ( To the others ) I always find it embarrassing to say to a woman, Sit down. (To PAULA) All of us were thinking of you. Even the Vicar-General, I think?

KOERBER-KENT

( Jokingly ) Now I know why I felt the whole time as if a door had been left open somewhere.

KILB

Your signet ring is tarnished, Monsignore.

KOERBER-KENT

Continue, my friend. (KILB remains silent. ) He’s never got more than one sentence in him. The habit of quick interjections has ruined him.

(PAULA has sat down. She is still wearing riding clothes. QUITT’S WIFE comes in again. She pretends she is looking for something. PAULA loosens her scarf and shakes her hair. QUITT’S WIFE stomps her feet. As she walks on, the heel of her shoe gets caught in a crack in the floor. She hops backward, slips back into the shoe, and tries to walk out with measured steps. KILB barks after her and she disappears with a scream. )

QUITT

Perhaps the reason for the nausea is that only a minute ago you could have held an entirely different opinion of the matter, and in that case the story would have taken an entirely different turn.

PAULA

You look at me as if I should ask, What does this mean?

QUITT

Please remind me later that I must still explain something to you.

PAULA

When?

QUITT

Later.

LUTZ

I don’t want to be pushy. There’s a lot at stake today. I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep last night without my autogenic training. I usually think of the ocean when that happens, but even that sparkled for a long time like freshly mashed spinach from my new freezer package, and the moon above had been crossed out with a felt pen and a smaller one circled in beside it.

VON WULLNOW

All right, let’s get down to business. I assume, if not our conversation, then what we mean by it is ears only. In any event, you have my word of honor. ( He takes a look around .) The Vicar-General swears on this, doesn’t he? Lutz promises, or no? And Quitt? Nods. Mrs. Tax’s thoughts are still nudging her horse with her thighs. And our guest of honor? (He nods briefly toward KILB.)

QUITT

Hans.

(HANS appears at once, frisks KILB, shakes his head—“no microphone”—and withdraws again. KILB thereupon takes his stool and sits down with the others, assumes the pose of a kibitzer.)

VON WULLNOW

We’re no sharks. But we’ve learned that free enterprise is a dog-eat-dog business. Public opinion regards us as monsters belching cigar smoke. And in the often so poetically quoted moments of those overly long cross-country trips we see ourselves like that: we’ve become what once we didn’t want to become at any price. Don’t shake your head, Vicar-General. You know that’s not the way I mean it. No, we aren’t just the bad guys in a game: we really are bad. Even as a gourmet, my face has slowly but surely become less and less soulful — although for a long time I hoped for the opposite. Just take a look at your colleagues business-lunching in the three-star restaurants, Lutz: their jowls register a lifelong sellout. A lifelong circus, not just twice a year like the housewives. Still, it is premature undialectical impressionism, as Mrs. Tax would surely say, trying to dump on us. After all, we didn’t become monsters because we relished it. My primal experience is the thought: There’s no such thing as a human being who becomes inhuman of his own accord. That’s what I tell myself whenever I have to put myself together again after having done something I actually abhor in my heart of hearts.

QUITT

What you’re trying to say is that it’s futile to try to enlarge the market any further by means of price wars.

LUTZ

( Glances at KILB.) Not like that. Everyone should be able to translate it into his own terms.

QUITT

Competition is a game. Fighting is childish. Together we can underbid the small fry until they long to live from dividends. Not force, but the gentle law of displacement. When I was a child I would sometimes quietly sit down on something that someone else wanted, and absentmindedly whistle a song to myself.

KOERBER-KENT

You’re not at confession here, Quitt.

QUITT

To the point: first of all: there are too many products, the market has become opaque. Who is producing too much? One of us? Perish the thought. Who then? They, of course. We’re going to make the market transparent again. Second: now there are no longer too many products but too many units of the same product. The refrigeration plants are bursting with butter, I read at breakfast today. Is our supply too large? No, demand is too low, and that’s the catch we live off of. Third of all: is demand too low because prices are too high? Of course. And prices are too high because wages are too high, right? So we are going to have to pay lower wages. But how? By having the work done more cheaply somewhere else. Say, “Mauritius represents an excellent labor market. The plantations have accustomed the population to hard work for generations. The nimble Asiatic fingers have become skilled and are a proven value.” Therefore, we will be able to claim that our merchandise is a bigger bargain. That’s the biggest drawing card. Besides, imagine that all goods will bear the legend: “Made in Mauritius.” I remember the yearning such labels used to instill in me as a child. Why shouldn’t they exert the same effect on our beloved consumers? In any event, demand will rise and we will match up our prices again. Fourth: from time to time we take a walk through the forest by ourselves so as to feel like human beings. Fifth: (To VON WULLNOW) All this time I’ve felt the irresistible urge to wipe off your wet mouth. (He wipes off VON WULLNOW’S mouth with a handkerchief. To KILB) Repeat what I’ve said just now.

( Pause. )

KILB

( Moves his lips, falters, tries again, shakes his head. He hops on his stool toward QUITT.) Anyway, it sounded logical. As logical as this here. ( He tugs at both his ears and his tongue sticks out of his mouth, grabs his chin, and the tongue slips back inside. The businessmen meanwhile have exchanged significant glances .)

LUTZ

So we’re celebrating already?

QUITT

I’m not finished yet.

KOERBER-KENT

What were you playing just now? It was just a game, wasn’t it? Because in reality you are—

QUITT

( Interrupts him. ) Yes, but only in reality. ( To VON WULLNOW) And you are speechless?

VON WULLNOW

I’m just getting used to you again. Perhaps you’re just one of those people who like to squeeze other people’s pimples.

QUITT

( Strikes his forehead histrionically .) True, I was carried away by something. But now I’m normal again.

VON WULLNOW

It passed so quickly I’ve already forgotten it. I was brushed by a bat. Did something happen? Besides, you haven’t finished yet.