Peter Handke: The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

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 restorer — the German poet Adalbert Stifter after all was a restorer — that 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 are — well — where 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 water — that’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.

( There is thunder .)

HANS

This time

I can find no rhyme.

QUITT

Good night.

(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.)

WIFE

I have something else to say to you.

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.

WIFE

But I would like to say something to you. Please.

( Pause .)

QUITT

( Suddenly very tender ) Then tell me. ( He takes her around the waist, she moves in his embrace .) Tell me.

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 .)

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 SIN — THE IMPATIENCE OF CONCEPTS — THE WORST IS OVER — THE LAST HOPE. Next to them are children’s drawings. The usual stage lighting (which remains the same throughout).

HANS is lying on an old deck chair, dressed as before, and is asleep. He is mumbling in his sleep and laughs; time passes.

QUITT walks in from behind the wall, rubbing his hands. He executes a little dance step while walking. He whistles to himself.

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.

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.

QUITT

Dream on, little dreamer, dream — just as long as you don’t interpret your dreams.

HANS

But what if the dream interprets itself — as it did just now?

QUITT

You are talking about yourself — why is that?

HANS

You’ve infected me.

QUITT

And how?

HANS

By employing your personality — and 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.

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?

HANS

On the contrary, I want to stay forever. I still have much to learn from you.

QUITT

Would you like to be like me?

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?

QUITT

The long and short of it: you are still here for me?

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 one — but 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 do — that 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 mannequin — notice my new freedom, I’m already playing with words! — cursed 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.