Peter Handke - The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

QUITT

What is important is that from now on none of us does anything without the other. When I buy raw materials without informing you of my source, that’s treason. When Lutz brings a new product on the market to corner a share of the turf, that’s treason. If the Vicar-General pays his female labor a lower scale than we do, because they are devout farm girls, and depresses prices, that’s treason. If you, Paula, let your workers share in the profits and have to raise prices all by yourself, that’s treason. ( To VON WULLNOW) That’s the way you want it, isn’t it?

VON WULLNOW

Mrs. Tax would probably pose the counterquestion: But what if I let them share because I find it reasonable — say, to increase production?

QUITT

(To PAULA, as if she had answered for herself ) It’s not treason as long as you don’t raise your prices without first consulting us. And as long as you and I have the same habits, you can’t betray me. And now the champagne, Hans.

( A cork pops backstage. HANS appears at once, carrying a tray with champagne glasses and a bottle which is still smoking. The ceremony of pouring the champagne. QUITT points ironically to the quality of the champagne and glasses, for example: “Dom Perignon 1935, Biedermeier glasses, handblown, notice the irregularities in the glass.” The group rises to its feet, clinks glasses, drinks quietly, looking into each other’s eyes. KILB has not gotten up. While the others are drinking he briefly laughs a few times without the others paying him any heed. He pulls out his knife, turns it back and forth, and lets it fall mumblety-peg fashion to the floor. They look at him without interest. He puts the knife away and plays a little on his harmonica. HANS has already left with the tray. KILB gets up and spits at the feet of each person, one after the other. In front of PAULA he uses his hand to pull out his chin, simultaneously sticking out his behind. The rest continue to regard him benignly. Suddenly he picks up LUTZ and the priest, who don’t object, one after the other, and puts them down somewhere else. He crisscrosses the stage. In passing, he kicks them lightly on the backs of their knees so that their legs give a little, except for the last one. He offers PAULA his thigh, Harpo Marx fashion, which she holds and then lets drop again; he makes an exception of QUITT , only casting sidelong glances at him. Now he has also begun to speak. )

KILB

And I? Is it my job to take care of the entertainment? Am I the critter whose ears are allowed to hear everything? Or the poodle in front of whom you lie down naked in bed? I can drag you across your beautiful lawns with my teeth. I’ll stuff the gaps in your beautiful whole sentences with pus. I’ll cram your spray-deodorized private parts into Baggies. You singe the fluff off slaughtered chickens with a candle. In Switzerland they say “chicken skin” instead of “goose bumps.” Enjoy! Enjoy! I always speak this calmly, dear lady. Here, you’ve dropped your Charmin. ( He pulls out a strip of toilet paper and places it over her arm; she smiles, unimpressed .) If you ever catch fire it will be me who wraps you in blankets until you choke to death. And when you all freeze to death I’ll sit beside you cracking my knuckles. Diabolical, don’t you agree? ( More and more embarrassed ) Let yourselves be conjured up out of your personal hedgerows, you, the bewitched of the business world, a free man stands before you, a model, a picture-book figure. ( He slaps his hands together, slaps his thighs and the soles of his shoes like a folk dancer, only more slowly and awkwardly .) Let’s swing a little! Action! Lights! A little circus atmosphere! Not just words against which the brain is defenseless anyway! Conserve your vocal chords! More body language! ( He picks up a champagne glass and lets it drop somewhat helplessly, makes a vain reflex movement to catch it, which he tries to overplay. ) And don’t stand around like a bunch of stiffs! Anyway, far too statuesque! Move. You will be recognized by your movements. Let’s celebrate. ( He dances PAULA a few steps farther across the stage, then stops in front of her. He starts unbuttoning her blouse … He encourages himself by beating his fists together and blowing into the hollow of his hands. In between he sticks his hands into his armpits as if they were freezing. No one stops him. Sidelong glances at QUITT. QUITT watches him attentively as well as remotely, almost impatiently. KILB tugs the blouse out of the riding britches, somewhat indecisively. PAULA merely smiles. He steps back as if he were giving up, performs another pathetic slapping gesture without really slapping his hands together. Suddenly QUITT leaps forward, seizes KILB’S hand, and wants to use it to tear off PAULA ’S blouse himself. KILB resists. QUITI“ S WIFE enters, watches with interest. QUITT lets go of KILB and tears off the blouse himself. PAULA crosses her arms in front of her breasts without undue hurry. QUITT’S WIFE leaves. QUITT places another champagne glass in KILB’S hand, simultaneously takes the other glasses into his fist, and smashes them, one after the other, on the floor, repeating KILB’S words—”Enjoy! enjoy!“—while doing so … nudges him in the side until KILB , too, drops his glass, somewhat indecisively. QUITT walks from one person to the other and spits into each face; lifts up a splinter of glass and attacks KILB with it, throws the splinter away, and puts KILB into a headlock; leads him back and forth like this and butts his head against the others. In the headlock, trying to free himself ) You misunderstood me, Quitt. There’s no method to your madness. It is unaesthetic, vulgar, formless. But worst of all, it is unmusical, has neither melody nor rhythm. That wasn’t how we planned it. Don’t you understand a joke? Can’t you distinguish between ritual and reality any more? Know your limits, Quitt.

QUITT

( While pushing him into a chair and dragging him offstage on it ) Until now you have lived off the fact that I have my limits, you phony. Now show me my limits, you model of the independent life. ( Far upstage he tips him out of sight and comes back. )

(PAULA walks off with measured steps. HANS reappears with a dustpan and whisk broom. The others are cleaning themselves. Everyone begins to smile. QUITT does not smile. HANS sweeps the splinters together. PAULA returns dressed and smiles also, with closed lips. )

VON WULLNOW

I believe he’s finally learned his lesson.

KOERBER-KENT

He’ll never learn anything, He’s got no memory. The jack-in-the-box merely uses the floor to propel himself. He doesn’t forget because he doesn’t remember anything. The horsefly lands on the very spot it’s just been shooed away from. He doesn’t think backward and forward like us who have a sense of history — as Mrs. Tax might say — he only has a good nose. I would call him a mere animal, an involuntary, fidgeting animal. The sparrows in the field, not by living, but by being lived, are the divine principle. I can see him now on his bicycle animalistically rushing down the tree-lined avenues.

QUITT

Don’t always look at me when you speak; I can’t listen to you that way.

VON WULLNOW

It’s a pity that there are no more tree-lined avenues. How sweet, for instance, the memory of the manor house at dawn — the house at the vanishing point of the two rows of chestnut trees, the windows reflecting darkly, only the dormers of the servants’ quarters already lighted up; a hedgehog rustles in the dry leaves at our feet, the special stagnant air of that time of day when the sick go into themselves and die willingly, and a chestnut suddenly thuds down and bursts on the gun on our shoulder while we have turned around for one last look at our parents’ house before we stalk cross-country to our hunting ground. Yes, a delicate being, our minority stockholder, as delicate as a thief when it comes to opening a drawer, as delicate as a murderer when it comes to handling a knife.